Word: khaddam
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...that Syria was overflowing with good feeling for the U.S. either. Kissinger tells how, as his plane was coming in for a landing during the Syrian shuttle, a U.S. diplomat on hand to greet him turned to Syria's waspish Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Abdel Halim Khaddam and said: "I think the airplane is God's punishment to mankind." "No," replied Khaddam without changing expression, "America...
...Saddam Hussein, who was still smarting from Israel's surprise raid last June on the nuclear reactor in Baghdad. In all, eight top-level Arab leaders failed to go to Fez, including Syria's President Hafez Assad, who sent in his place Foreign Minister Abdel Halim Khaddam...
...Although Khaddam led the outcry against the Fahd plan at the meeting, he carefully avoided saying that Syria rejected the proposal outright. He made it clear that Assad's longstanding opposition to acceptance of Israel was more a matter of strategy. If the Arabs tacitly accepted Israel's existence, he argued, what incentive was there for Israel to return captured Arab lands or grant Palestinian self-determination? The Saudis' rebuttal was that a unified Arab position might have far-reaching effects on global public opinion, as it did in Rabat in 1974 when the leaders recognized...
...Khaddam made his points so abrasively that he outraged King Hassan and other moderates. At one point, Khaddam announced that he was tired and hungry. Hassan turned and said that if he wanted a meal, an airplane was ready to take him back to Damascus. Finally, when Libyan Foreign Minister Abdel Ati Obeidi declared the Fahd plan to be "outright treason," Hassan could stand no more. He gaveled the meeting to a close...
Arafat's room to maneuver was also cramped by his dependence on Syria, which helps sustain the P.L.O. as a military force. Syrian Prime Minister Abdul-Rauf Kassem has criticized the Fahd plan as "ineffective." But Foreign Minister Abdul Halim Khaddam is known to favor it, and President Hafez Assad has yet to be convinced. Should the Syrians and the P.L.O. finally side with the Saudis, other intransigent states like Algeria would probably go along, leaving Libya the main opposition to the plan...