Word: hafez
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...officials in Washington could legitimately disagree. Last May Secretary of State George Shultz negotiated a Lebanese-Israeli accord providing for the withdrawal of Israel's 36,000 troops from Lebanon on the condition that Syria also pulled out its 60,000 men. But Syrian President Hafez Assad, who has received some $3.5 billion worth of arms from the Soviet Union over the past year, has refused to go along with the arrangement...
Meanwhile, Palestine Liberation Organization Leader Yasser Arafat is still trying desperately to contain the revolt that broke out two months ago within Fatah, the P.L.O.'s dominant group. His charge that Syrian President Hafez Assad fanned the rebellion prompted Syria to expel Arafat last month. Although thousands of his fighters remain in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley, Arafat has had to move his base of operations to Tunisia while trying to win support from Arab leaders and the Soviet Union. The P.L.O. leader could take little comfort in the news from Moscow last week. According to a TASS report...
When George Shultz began his diplomatic hopscotch across the Middle East last week, he candidly admitted that he did not expect much to come of it. The results seem to have lived down to his expectations fully. In Damascus, Syrian President Hafez Assad told the Secretary of State privately what he has been saying publicly for two months: Syria adamantly opposes the agreement worked out last May calling for Israel to withdraw its troops from Lebanon, and therefore Syria refuses to pull out its own forces. Admitted Shultz at trip's end: "I can't point...
...himself, the rebels stormed a convoy of twelve P.L.O. vehicles in the western Syrian town of Homs. Arafat, who was safely in Damascus, declared that a dozen of his men had been killed or wounded in the attack. Hours later, the long-smoldering feud between Arafat and Syrian President Hafez Assad broke into the open as the Syrian government brusquely expelled Arafat, advising him that in the future he would be unwelcome in either Syria or the Bekaa Valley. He left immediately for Tunis to hold emergency meetings with his top lieutenants. By week...
...problems in dealing with the Syrians on the withdrawal issue is that they have been giving mixed diplomatic signals for some time. Syrian President Hafez Assad has consistently denounced the Lebanese-Israeli agreement, but at the same time he has hinted to Washington that he would welcome talks with U.S. negotiators, though not with U.S. Special Envoy Philip Habib. He would probably like to meet directly with Secretary of State George Shultz, who believes that preliminary discussions should be conducted by lower-ranking officials. Some U.S. experts on the Middle East feel that if the Syrians are really ready...