Word: lebanons
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...White House has begun signaling a new approach to Syrian relations - for starters, it invited Syria to last week's Annapolis peace conference to revive Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking. And Washington's overtures to Damascus, which the U.S. has repeatedly slammed for sponsoring terrorism and meddling in Lebanon and Iraq, have left pro-Western Lebanese leaders worried about being "sold out" as part of a broader U.S.-Syrian deal to stabilize the region...
...message the Americans are sending to the region is that what succeeds is terror, bombings and a total disregard for democracy," a senior member of the anti-Syrian March 14 coalition in Lebanon tells TIME. "No one is going to remove the feeling from March 14 that we have been dumped by the Americans...
With the announcement of Suleiman's candidacy immediately following Annapolis, it was widely assumed that Syria and the U.S. had brokered a deal to fill the Lebanese presidency as a way to help ease months of tension between their respective allies in Lebanon. However, senior March 14 politicians tell TIME that the proposal to nominate Suleiman had arisen more than a week before Annapolis, several days before Syria even announced it would attend the peace conference. The anti-Syrian block had determined it was better to choose a President acceptable to the opposition than risk a prolonged constitutional vacuum...
...officials insist, however, that March 14's fears are unfounded. "There was no deal with the Syrians at Annapolis about Lebanon," Jeffrey Feltman, the U.S. ambassador in Beirut, tells TIME. "There will be no U.S. deal with the Syrians regarding Lebanon's presidency. This is an issue for the Lebanese alone to work...
...will be a tough sell convincing the anti-Syrian coalition in Beirut that the Bush Administration's support is unstinting. After all, they still remember that it was Bush's father, President George H.W. Bush, who green-lighted Syrian hegemony over Lebanon in 1990, in exchange for Syria's help in ousting Iraqi forces from Kuwait...