Word: syria
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...violent and critics grumbled about the Administration's failure to stand up for free speech and the U.S.'s suddenly besieged European allies, the Bush team ratcheted up the rhetoric. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said, "There is no excuse for violence," and she accused regimes in Iran and Syria of deliberately stirring up anti-Western sentiment. Aboard Air Force One last Tuesday, President George W. Bush phoned Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, with whom Bush has a close relationship, to stress Washington's solidarity and "buck him up," says a senior Administration official. But Bush aides acknowledge that...
...Indonesia. Its spread has been accelerated by widespread anti-Western anger over the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Western moves to block the development of Iran's nuclear ambitions. And the uproar is being exploited by regimes such as Iran and Syria, who hope to turn the widespread outrage over the cartoons among both radicals and moderates into political support in their own confrontations with the West. The failure of the police-state Damascus regime to prevent the siege of the Danish embassy there is being viewed as a form of retaliation for Western isolation...
...hypocrisy on the other side of the debate was even thicker. Syria called on the Danish government "to take the necessary measures to punish the culprits," piously arguing that "the dialogue of civilizations is based on mutual respect." Tell that to the Lebanese, whom the Syrians have treated as vassals for the past quarter century. Dalil Boubakeur, the chairman of the state-sponsored French Council for the Muslim Religion, was on the ramparts two years ago arguing for the principles of secularism that undergirds France's 2004 law against the wearing of veils or other religious symbols in schools...
Second, Arab Islamists have already achieved electoral success and takeover in Iraq, but Hamas represents the first Arab Islamist terrorist group to be legitimated through the ballot box. Comparable groups in countries such as Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco will watch and be encouraged, should there be any show of acceptance of Hamas by the U.S. and other governments...
...from Hamas' current position. Party officials describe the Oslo accords, negotiated in the early 1990s and languishing ever since, as dead. They say Hamas will never sell out Palestinians' rights, as they believe Fatah did. "As long as we are under occupation, then resistance is our right," Hamas' Syria-based political leader Khaled Mashaal told reporters in Damascus last Saturday. But there may be some wiggle room. A few Hamas officials hinted before the election that the party could negotiate with Israel under the right circumstances. "We are not against the Jews. We are against occupation and oppression," Sheik Mohammed...