Syria

BEIRUT, Lebanon -The Obama administration began the delicate task of laying the groundwork for possible talks with long-shunned Syrian leaders, dispatching two senior U.S. diplomats to meet top officials in Damascus, the Syrian capital, yesterday. The step, the highest-level visit by U.S. officials to the Syrian capital in more than four years, was among the first clear manifestations of President Barack Obama's new approach to the Middle East. Unlike his predecessor, Obama has vowed to engage in talks with rivals Syria and Iran in an effort to advance U.S. goals in the Middle East, which include redirecting Iran's nuclear program from potential military uses and providing security for Israel.

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- In a symbolic victory for Iraq, representatives of neighboring countries and world powers are gathering here to discuss how they could help stabilize the troubled country. The meeting, scheduled for today, will be a rare opportunity for Iran and the United States to sit at the same table. Syria, another frequent target of American animosity, will be there, too. But at a practical level the meeting is most important for Iraq, a country teetering on the brink of chaos and in desperate need of help from all its neighbors.

BEIRUT, Lebanon -- A car bomb shook a Christian neighborhood outside Beirut yesterday, killing a Lebanese lawmaker and six other people days before the parliament of this divided country is to hold a presidential election. The killing of Antoine Ghanem, 64, a member of the Western-backed parliamentary majority, was the sixth assassination in two years to target prominent detractors of neighboring Syria. Some analysts said the killing was an attempt by groups loyal to Syria to reduce the size of a parliamentary bloc supported by the United States and Europe.

Dec. 14 1799 George Washington, the first U.S. president, died at his Mount Vernon, Va., home at 67. 1981 Israel annexed the Golan Heights, seized from Syria in 1967.

Don't complain about American politics. The U.S. system may seem complex and unwieldy, with multiple candidates vying to win multiple caucuses and primaries - and endless debates, speeches and television advertisements. But American politics look simple compared with the chaotic situation half a world away, in the Middle East, where elections are a matter of life and death. Take Lebanon - a small country in a rough neighborhood. A political tug-of-war has left four members of parliament dead and a presidency that may or may not be filled before the end of the year.

WASHINGTON -- Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak told President Clinton yesterday that he would make an intensive effort in coming weeks to restart peace talks with Syria that collapsed in 1996, the Israeli delegation said.But Barak warned that Israel would not return to the borders that existed before the 1967 Six-Day War between the Jewish state and its Arab neighbors, either on the Golan Heights or the West Bank.Greeted warmly as a peacemaker, Barak plunged into the substance of Arab-Israeli diplomacy in a 2 1/2-hour, private meeting with Clinton in the Treaty Room of the White House residential wing, saying this generation has a historic opportunity to end the conflict.

WASHINGTON -- Israel and Syria took "critical steps in the journey toward peace" in negotiations here over the past two days, President Clinton said yesterday, with the two sides agreeing to return here for more-intensive talks on Jan. 3.The meetings between Prime Minister Ehud Barak of Israel and Foreign Minister Farouq al-Sharaa of Syria, described as formal but cordial by U.S. officials, were the highest-level talks ever conducted between their countries.Secretary...

When Israel and Syria make peace, the butcher Assad should win the Nobel Prize.How about the Library of Congress pays the full $20 million it agreed for the M.L. King Jr. papers, not to his heirs but to legal services for the poor in former slave states?Now that the Ravens are winning games, they ought to pass a law saying this is still early October."Peanuts" forever!

WASHINGTON -- President Clinton, concluding a series of meetings with Israel's new prime minister, said yesterday that he would personally press Syria's president, Hafez el Assad to push negotiations forward.U.S. officials said they were encouraged by reports that Syria has halted its support for Damascus-based groups that use violence to undercut the Middle East peace process.If the reports are true, they said, the shift could help Syria get taken off the list of nations that sponsor terrorism and lead to a better relationship with the United States.

JERUSALEM -- In a trial run for Israel's eventual withdrawal from Lebanon, an Israeli-backed militia announced yesterday that it is vacating a strategic enclave in southern Lebanon it has held for 14 years.The pullback by the South Lebanon Army, Israel's proxy in the region, will leave the mostly Christian Jezzine pocket open for takeover by Lebanese government forces -- or by Islamic Hezbollah guerrillas who are waging a war of attrition against Israel. Israeli officials are watching closely to see which scenario unfolds.

BEIRUT, Lebanon -The Obama administration began the delicate task of laying the groundwork for possible talks with long-shunned Syrian leaders, dispatching two senior U.S. diplomats to meet top officials in Damascus, the Syrian capital, yesterday. The step, the highest-level visit by U.S. officials to the Syrian capital in more than four years, was among the first clear manifestations of President Barack Obama's new approach to the Middle East. Unlike his predecessor, Obama has vowed to engage in talks with rivals Syria and Iran in an effort to advance U.S. goals in the Middle East, which include redirecting Iran's nuclear program from potential military uses and providing security for Israel.

JARAMANA, Syria - Hasem Abed is thinking about going back to Iraq. The small-time auto trader, 32, left Diyala earlier this year after members of a Shia militia destroyed his house. He says this town outside Damascus has been more secure, but he has run out of money and has been unable to find work. He is thinking of trying his luck in Baghdad. Hassam Abdul Rahman might join him. Life in Iraq, the 42-year-old mechanical engineer says, "is very bad." But he, too, has exhausted his savings in Syria.

DOUMA, Syria - Second of three parts Mustafa Hamad Rassoul doesn't see how his family can survive. Back in Baghdad, the 55-year-old Iraqi Kurd says, the money he made running a clothing shop was more than enough to house and feed his two wives and 10 children. But here in Syria, where he came last year after being threatened by the Mahdi Army, the food and cash assistance his family receives doesn't last the month. Rassoul blames the United States. "America always talks about human rights," he says while waiting at the U.N. refugee registration center in this city outside Damascus.

DAMASCUS, Syria - Adnan al-Sharafy sees a few obstacles holding up the return of Iraqi refugees to their home country: the U.S. military, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees and the news media. Sharify, an official at the Iraqi Embassy here in Syria, helped to organize government-sponsored bus trips at the end of last year that he says carried 420 Iraqi families back to Baghdad. (The United Nations estimates the Iraqi population here at 1.2 million.) More free rides home are planned, Sharify says.

DAMASCUS, Syria - These refugees aren't in camps. And that's making it more difficult for aid workers to address their growing needs. The great majority of Iraqis who have come to Syria have settled in and around the capital. Most have disappeared into the cosmopolitan population of this Middle Eastern hub; many are intentionally keeping their profiles low, for fear of being caught, detained, and sent back to Iraq. The pattern is the same in Jordan, Lebanon and other Iraqi neighbors. "It's completely different from a camp situation," says Imran Riza, who represents the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees in Jordan.

U.S. raid into Syria targeted Iraqi militant WASHINGTON: A raid into Syria on Sunday was conducted by U.S. Special Operations forces who killed an Iraqi militant responsible for smuggling weapons, money and foreign fighters across the border into Iraq, U.S. officials said yesterday. The helicopter-borne attack into Syria was by far the boldest by U.S. commandos in the five years since the United States invaded Iraq and began to condemn Syria's role in stoking the Iraqi insurgency. In justifying the attack, U.S. officials said the Bush administration was determined to operate under an expansive definition of self-defense that provided a rationale for strikes on militant targets in sovereign nations without those countries' consent.

U.S. forces crossed five miles into Syria by helicopter and launched a commando raid yesterday near the Iraqi border that left at least eight people dead, Syrian news outlets and sources reported. Details of yesterday's attack were sketchy. A military officer in Iraq confirmed that U.S. forces had conducted a raid into Syria but declined to provide further information. In Washington, military representatives did not deny that a raid had taken place. Though they would not confirm the attack, they used language typically employed after raids conducted by Special Operations Forces.

As Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain ponder how they would guide America in the world, they need wise counsel and sound advice. Recently, five former U.S. secretaries of state from both political parties provided just that. Henry A. Kissinger, James A. Baker III, Warren Christopher, Madeleine K. Albright and Colin L. Powell gathered at George Washington University to talk about the challenges facing the next president. Two support Mr. McCain (Mr. Baker and Mr. Kissinger) and two favor Mr. Obama (Ms. Albright and Mr. Christopher)

DAMASCUS, Syria - Mystery surrounded a powerful car bomb explosion yesterday that ripped through a residential neighborhood on the outskirts of Damascus, killing at least 17 people and injuring 14 others in the deadliest terrorist attack in Syria in more than two decades. Official Syrian television channels broadcast footage of the blast's aftermath, including a crushed car and the mangled facade of an apartment block with windows blown out. One witness told Syrian television that the bomb was packed into a sedan.

Picking wrong time to repair Bay Bridge It is unbelievable and sad but true. The geniuses in the Maryland Department of Transportation have decided that it is so important to reinforce the guard rail on the eastbound Bay Bridge that they are closing one eastbound lane over the Labor Day weekend ("Bridge narrows," Aug. 27). It is not uncommon for the state Transportation Department to close portions of major highways during holiday travel periods. It has done so frequently. However, this action is almost beyond comprehension.