Assad

Syrian President Hafez el Assad harbors Hezbollah in Lebanon, and such groups as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine in Damascus. The dictator endorsed the PLO agreement with Israel, while hosting groups have sworn to destroy it. He has been negotiating with Israel since 1991 on an exchange of recognition for the return of the Golan Heights to Syria. Mr. Assad is a cautious despot. He is comfortable only with all options open.

Having determined that the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad has used chemical weapons against his opponents in the country's bloody two-year civil war, the Obama administration is now reportedly preparing to send lethal military aid to rebel forces battling the regime. Mr. Obama said earlier this year that any use of chemical weapons by the Syrian military would cross a "red line" that invited a U.S. response. Now that American intelligence has confirmed Syria has crossed that line, the U.S. response must be measured but leave no doubt that the use of such weapons will not be tolerated.

JERUSALEM -- If Israelis were waiting for President Hafez el Assad to spell out his vision of a peace plan, it was a short spelling lesson.Publicly the Syrian leader uttered the one word Israel was waiting for -- "normal" relations -- but declined to go further than that."

Human rights organizations believe that some 70,000 innocent civilians have been killed by the government in Syria's civil war and a million more have fled their country as refugees. Another million internally displaced people are wandering around inside Syria seeking safety. Since World War II, after Hitler's evil attempt to annihilate an entire population, people have been asking why the world took so long to intervene. Yet today, while innocent people are being sent to their deaths in Syria, the world continues to hem and haw while it tip-toes around the politically correct policies of honoring Syria's national autonomy and respecting its "sovereignty.

Washington -- WHAT'S REALLY in that letter from Syria's dictator, Hafez al-Assad, to George Bush?News accounts say that Syria has unconditionally accepted our proposal to convene a Middle East conference. Only a silent U.N. observer would be permitted, goes the Bush compromise; and if face-to-face negotiations stall, no running to a plenary session of outside powers can happen without both parties' consent."Very positive," said President Bush of the letter; "a breakthrough." Secretary Baker called it "a positive response and it is not -- if you read the letter -- it is not conditioned."

It appears that Syria is prepared to make peace, at its own pace, with Israel. If so, Israel would emerge largely at peace with the Arab world for the first time. President Clinton met President Hafez el Assad at Geneva Sunday to obtain a public endorsement of this in principle. It was obtained. His five-hour meeting with the dictator whom the State Department accuses of sponsoring terrorism was the price that Mr. Clinton paid. It was probably arranged when Secretary of State Warren Christopher called on Mr. Assad in December.

DAMASCUS, Syria -- Secretary of State Warren M. Christopher met for five hours yesterday with Syrian President Hafez el Assad, outlining new Israeli ideas for a peace settlement and urging the Syrian leader to help prevent skirmishes across the Israel-Lebanon border from torpedoing the delicate negotiations."

Hafez el Assad is the dictator's dictator: strong, long-lasting, and if not beloved, at least not reviled by his people.The leader of Syria, who will meet President Clinton in Geneva today, has been said to be comparable to Saddam Hussein, only smarter. There are many similarities, though the two autocrats -- are old and committed foes.The comparison is key to a question at the heart of today's Geneva summit: Is the United States making the same mistake by dealing with Mr. Assad that it made with Mr. Hussein?

DAMASCUS, Syria -- Secretary of State James A. Baker III met for more than six hours last night with President Hafez el AssadTC in a post-gulf war bid to restart the Arab-Israeli peace process and bring more stability to this region.The two held talks with aides present for several hours before starting a one-on-one session with translators that went well into the night.Mr. Assad is known for lengthy lectures to foreign officials. But the duration of the Baker talks reflected a deepening relationship between the United States and Syria after the war and the secretary's evident determination to wring something tangible from his six-nation trip.

DAMASCUS, Syria -- Syria buried its longtime leader Hafez el Assad yesterday in an outpouring of national anguish and raucous rallying behind his son and heir, Bashar. The ceremony began well before dawn, as the mournful wail from muezzins echoed through the capital's still streets. It ended with shouts of praise and pain ricocheting against the rumble of cannons while mourners laid Assad to rest near the grave of his oldest son, Basil, beneath the vaulted ceiling of a family shrine in his native village, Qurdaha.

Syria's 20-month-long civil war appears to be approaching a tipping point as fighting around Damascus intensifies amid signs that President Bashar Assad's grip on power may be weakening. As the final phase in the long conflict apparently draws nearer, the U.S. needs be prepared for the challenges it will face in a post-Assad Syria that, like Libya, could well remain unsettled for years after the dictator's departure. In recent weeks, Syrian rebels have captured a number of strategic military bases and weapons dumps, allowing them to press their advantage.

A recent intelligence leak confirms something that regular readers of this column already know: that the Obama administration has officially authorized covert support of local "rebel" groups, through government agencies like the CIA, with the goal of destabilizing and subverting the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria. The interesting consequence is that al-Qaida is likely among the groups President Obama's directive now supports. Just think about this for a minute. The president of the United States, according to an intelligence leak initially reported by Reuters, has secretly authorized support of an undisclosed nature for armed fighters in a region, including members of the group now synonymous with terrorism against American and Western interests in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.

The defection of Syrian Prime Minister Riyad Hijab this week is the latest blow to President Bashir Assad's increasingly desperate struggle to remain in office. Mr. Hijab was the highest-ranking Sunni member of the government, which is dominated by Mr. Assad's minority Alawite sect, as well as the highest-ranking government official to renounce his position so far. While the departure is not expected to cause the government to collapse, it does signal a weakening of the Sunni majority's loyalty to Assad regime.

Today's decision by Russia and China to veto a United Nations Security Council resolution to impose sanctions on the brutal regime in Syria is, at most, a hollow victory for President Bashar Assad. Russian officials say they opposed the measure for fear that it would lead to regime change, possibly with the assistance of western military forces, as in Libya. But given the events on the ground this week in Syria, the veto appears likely only to ensure that regime change comes through blood and chaos, not diplomacy.

Reports that Russia is supplying Syrian President Bashar Assad with attack helicopters for use against rebel fighters and civilian protesters mark an ominous new phase in the country's descent into chaos and civil war. Mr. Assad's escalation from tanks and heavy artillery to aerial assaults threatens to spark a new arms race between the government and its opponents that can only lead to more bloodshed and suffering as long as he remains in power....

The international community has to be terminally naive to believe that words and threats that aren't backed up by force will deter Syrian President Bashar Assad from murdering his own people ("Killings intensify Syria crisis," May 31). Even at 10,000 civilians massacred by Syrian government forces, this catastrophe pales in comparison to his father's vendetta, when more than 30,000 Syrians were slaughtered. Both men ruled by the sword; in light of Mr. Assad's continuing support from Iran and Russia, only a military response will lead to the overthrow of this dictator.

FROM THE SPRINGBOARD of the Lebanon cease-fire, Secretary of State Warren Christopher should press on for peace between Syria and Israel. He should keep President Hafez el Assad in play.But he should not expect immediate progress. Mr. Assad is awaiting the outcome of the May 29 Israeli elections. If Prime Minister Shimon Peres is re-elected, he will think about it. If Benjamin Netanyahu takes over, Mr. Assad will expect intransigence and understand the game better.The firefight between Israel and Lebanon had many victims.

Syrian President Bashar Assad hinted yesterday that he would not agree to the demands of a U.N. probe into the killing of a top Lebanese politician, setting up a possible showdown between Syria and the United Nations. In a defiant, 80-minute speech at Damascus University, Assad said there would be limits to Syria's cooperation with U.N. investigator Detlev Mehlis. "We will play their game," he said, adding that Syrian assistance will "stop when Syria is going to be harmed." Assad said Mehlis, who is investigating the Feb. 14 bombing that killed former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, has rejected Damascus' terms for interviewing six top Syrian officials.

How much longer can the world stand by while Syrian dictator Bashar Assad murders his own people by the thousands and the streets of Syria's cities and towns run red with the blood of his victims? If there were any remaining doubt as to whether Mr. Assad might see reason and accept the peace proposals put forward by U.N. envoy Kofi Annan, last week's massacre in the village of Houla, near Homs, where 108 civilians - more than half of them women and children - were methodically gunned down by pro-government thugs shows the dictator has no intention of stopping the killing.

The announcement Sunday that the U.S. will join Turkey in providing "nonlethal" humanitarian aid to Syrian opposition groups is a clear sign of the Obama administration's growing frustration with the failure of diplomatic efforts to halt Syrian President Bashar Assad's bloody crackdown on dissent. But it's still far from clear whether that modest escalation of involvement in the conflict will hasten Mr. Assad's departure from the scene. The U.S. has been calling on the U.N. Security Council for weeks to prevent what officials fear is a looming humanitarian disaster on the order of the mass killings in Kosovo and Bosnia during the 1990s.