Word: hafez
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During the first days, as Flight 847 crisscrossed the Mediterranean from Athens to Beirut to Algiers, Reagan's advisers sent messages to various world leaders -- including Syria's Hafez Assad, Algeria's Chadli Bendjedid and Lebanon's Amin Gemayel -- asking them to use their influence to end the crisis. Though a number of hostages were released at each stop, none of the leaders was able to effect a quick resolution. Washington moved military forces, including elements of the Army's elite Delta Force, into the region. "Our hope was that the plane would never leave Algeria," says a State Department...
...most clearly enhanced diplomatic position, if only because of such previously abysmal relations with the Reagan Administration, belonged to Syria and its President for the past 14 years, Hafez Assad. In putting his prestige on the line by guaranteeing the safe delivery of the 39 U.S. hostages from their various Shi'ite captors, including the fanatics of Hizballah (Party of God), Assad convincingly demonstrated that he controls many of the levers of power in seemingly chaotic Lebanon. Ronald Reagan acknowledged Syria's "central responsibility" in the successful efforts to free the hostages, and the President also telephoned his thanks...
Despite Shultz's statement, that was never a very real hope. Apparently, neither Nabih Berri, leader of the Amal militia then holding the 39 TWA hostages, nor Syrian President Hafez Assad was able to deliver the seven. "They didn't have access to them," said one U.S. official last week. It also became clear to Washington that if the President insisted on the release of all 46, it would not even get the TWA 39. Said one U.S. official ruefully: "Sometimes policymakers have to decide on the greatest good for the greatest number...
...first heads of state Ronald Reagan cabled for assistance in the TWA hostage standoff was not a trusted ally of the U.S. but a frequent diplomatic adversary, Syrian President Hafez Assad. As a Soviet-armed Arab state sharing a tense 50-mile border with Israel, Syria rarely, if ever, sees eye to eye with Washington on Middle East policy. But the Administration was betting that in the current crisis U.S. interests converged in many ways with Assad's. By agreeing last week to act as the mediator in the release of 39 U.S. hostages from their Lebanese Shi'ite Muslim...
Unwilling to bargain, unable to use force, the U.S. turned to indirect diplomacy. Late in the first day of the crisis Reagan secretly cabled Syrian President Hafez Assad and asked him to use his influence to free the hostages or at least keep them alive. Though the Damascus regime has harbored Shi'ite extremists in terrorist camps in Baalbek, a city in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley, Assad is known to want to contain Shi'ite terror, as he takes his turn at trying to pacify Lebanon. His response to the U.S. request, according to Administration aides, was "positive." Assad...