Word: syria
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Though investigators initially suspected a Palestinian terrorist group backed by Iran or Syria, the charred contents of one recovered suitcase - which included bits of a Toshiba radio-cassette player and scraps of clothing with Maltese labels - eventually led officials to a Libyan man named Abdel Basset al-Megrahi, who was convicted of murder in 2001, and remains the only person to have served time for the atrocity. But after serving eight years, Al-Megrahi, who suffers from terminal prostate cancer, was freed Aug. 20 from a Scottish prison on "compassionate grounds." The decision to release the 57-year...
...President Nicolas Sarkozy, Foreign Affairs Ministry officials say, has repeatedly spoken by phone with his Syrian counterpart, President Bashar Assad, in recent weeks, requesting that Syria use all its influence with Tehran to free Afshar and Reiss. French officials now suspect Iran will mete out some symbolic legal ruling allowing the pair to return to France - perhaps before the start of Ramadan on Friday, Aug. 21. International media reports say a hastily organized visit by Assad to Iran has been planned for this week - presumably to secure Reiss and Afshar's freedom. (See pictures of Sarkozy celebrating Bastille...
...appears Syria is ready to return Sarkozy's favors. "Although the Americans have been slowly reaching out to Syria - especially since Barack Obama's election - Assad is aware Sarkozy was the first Western leader to truly see him as an ally and even a friend," says a French diplomat who asked not to be named. Sarkozy's trust, he adds, was especially appreciated by Damascus given the hatred former French President Jacques Chirac reserved for Assad - whom he blamed for the 2005 assassination of Lebanese Prime Minister and Chirac intimate Rafiq Hariri. "There's some genuine gratitude at work right...
...normalize its position in the international community. Katerina Dalacoura, an international-relations lecturer at the London School of Economics, says that while Damascus is keen to end its pariah status once and for all, it still needs to balance a lot of conflicting regional relationships in doing so. "Syria's improved relations with France, as well as the U.S., is in many ways aimed at allowing it to operate more freely in the complex Middle Eastern system that requires having influential Western allies," Dalacoura says. "So it lowers its tone in Lebanon, sends signals to Israel via Turkey that...
...What's more, Syria doesn't risk much going to bat for Paris now, since Iran is likely to spring Reiss and Afshar anyway. Tehran has used the women in the way it wanted to: as symbols of the supposed foreign planning behind the postelection protests. The bigger question is, Could Syria now be a useful interlocutor on the nuclear deal...