Word: syrians
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...Saddam Hussein's half-brother had just been arrested, perhaps with Syrian cooperation, and Assad had to decide whether he wanted to take credit for helping...
...actually," he said, then added ruefully, "but that's what people think." His tone was easy, conversational. He did not bellow or lecture, not even when he attempted to dispense patently ridiculous propaganda. But it was an odd conversation nonetheless, reflecting the jittery uncertainty of the Syrian regime in the face of massive international pressure. On Lebanon, Assad clearly indicated that a political decision had been made to withdraw Syria's troops and the only questions now were "technical": how much time it would take to move heavy equipment and rebuild fortifications on the border. He said...
...days later, however, the Syrian government issued a correction: the President hadn't really been talking about a total withdrawal but about compliance with the 1989 Taif Agreement ending Lebanon's long civil war. This wasn't the first time the Syrian government retracted or corrected or denied things that the President had said. In the days after last month's assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, Assad told Arab League President Amr Moussa that he was planning to withdraw from Lebanon, only to have the Syrian Information Minister later say that Moussa had got it wrong-Syria...
...Assad was also firmly evasive about cooperating with the U.S. in rounding up Iraqis supporting the insurgency from Syrian territory...
...This turned out to be a creatively incomplete answer. A few hours earlier, the Iraqis had announced that Saddam's half-brother Sabawi Ibrahim al-Hassan al-Tikriti had been captured in Syria, reportedly with the cooperation of Syrian authorities. Unaware of the Iraqi announcement during the interview, I later tried-unsuccessfully-to get a response from the President. The Syrian Information Ministry denied the Iraqi account, but a prominent Syrian official told me that al-Hassan was "personally responsible for the killing of thousands of Syrians during the 1980s, when he was associated with Iraqi intelligence. He was found...