Word: syrian
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Shultz met with the Syrian leader a day after bluntly telling Israel its occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip and "frustration" of Palestinian civil rights were a "dead-end street...
...before advancing. Red headbands identified the men as members of Hizballah, the disciplined and fanatical Shi'ite militia supported by Iran. After three weeks of combat, Hizballah's militants, led by Iranian Revolutionary Guards, had seized control of virtually the entire area of Beirut's southern suburbs from the Syrian-backed Amal militia. Nearly 300 people were killed in the clashes and some 1,000 wounded...
While Hizballah emerged as the clear winner on the ground, a larger victory may fall to Syrian President Hafez Assad. In late-night talks at the presidential villa near the Syrian seaside resort of Latakia last week, Assad and a four-member Hizballah delegation reached agreement on a cease-fire in the Beirut suburbs, followed 24 hours later by the entry into the area of a peacekeeping contingent of Syrian troops. On Friday morning, 900 Syrian infantrymen, armed with machine guns and grenade launchers and accompanied by Lebanese police, moved into a buffer zone between the warring militias. Under Syrian...
Iranian acceptance of the Syrian army's entry into the Beirut suburbs was thus perhaps a gesture of gratitude for the support Assad has given Iran throughout the conflict in the gulf. Iran could also claim that the peaceful solution prevented certain Hizballah defeat in Beirut had Syria used force, as it threatened to several times...
Some diplomats suggested that the Syrians' expanded security role in Beirut could improve prospects for the release of foreign hostages, including nine Americans, believed held by pro-Iranian militants in the Shi'ite neighborhoods. In his desire to regain respectability following Western charges of Syrian involvement in international terrorism, Assad would like to reap credit for seeing the hostages freed. A Western diplomat in Damascus described the security plan for the suburbs as "a move in the right direction...