Word: hafez
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...fight over succession really began in mid-August, just before the scheduled parliamentary election, when former President Sulieman Franjieh, 78, a close friend of Syrian President Hafez Assad, announced his candidacy. Assad, whose 40,000 troops in Lebanon reinforce his claim to be the country's dominant power broker, has been pressing for political reforms that would ensure a more equitable distribution of influence between Christians and Muslims. Muslims constitute an estimated 55% of the population. By tradition, the President has always been a Maronite Christian, the Prime Minister a Sunni Muslim and the Speaker of the National Assembly...
DAMASCUS, Syria--Secretary of State George P. Shultz yesterday met with President Hafez Assad to report on the Moscow summit and the faltering U.S. plan to set up Arab-Israeli peace negotiations...
While Hizballah emerged as the clear winner on the ground, a larger victory may fall to Syrian President Hafez Assad. In late-night talks at the presidential villa near the Syrian seaside resort of Latakia last week, Assad and a four-member Hizballah delegation reached agreement on a cease-fire in the Beirut suburbs, followed 24 hours later by the entry into the area of a peacekeeping contingent of Syrian troops. On Friday morning, 900 Syrian infantrymen, armed with machine guns and grenade launchers and accompanied by Lebanese police, moved into a buffer zone between the warring militias. Under Syrian...
Squadrons of Syrian tanks rolled into position around the southern suburbs of Beirut last week, their cannon muzzles pointed menacingly at the 16-sq.-mi. enclave. Two Syrian armored brigades, supported by two battalions of President Hafez Assad's elite Special Forces commandos, crouched behind barricades ringing the Shi'ite Muslim slums. Since May 6, fierce battles between rival militias had raged through the streets and alleys, causing many of the area's 250,000 residents to flee. In bloody hand-to-hand combat, the fanatical, pro- Iranian Hizballah had driven the more moderate, Syrian-backed Amal...
...troops moved into West Beirut in early 1987. The hostilities left the surprisingly strong Hizballah fighters in control of 70% of the disputed territory, a 16-sq.-mi. district of crowded slums that is home to 250,000 Shi'ites. Fighting was suspended after telephone consultations between Syrian President Hafez Assad and Iranian President Ali Khamenei. But the next day, the fragile alliance between Damascus and Tehran was taxed as Hizballah fighters broke the truce, drawing Syrian troops into the conflict...