Hafez Assad

Prime Minister Ehud Barak said in an interview published Friday that Hafez Assad will have to meet him face-to-face if the Syrian president wants to close a peace deal. Barak, who has been negotiating with Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk Shareh, said that progress can be made at that level but that "there are some issues we cannot decide on without President Clinton and myself sitting opposite President Assad." The next round of talks begins Wednesday.

Syrian President Hafez Assad won't meet with Israel's prime minister to sort out final details of a peace deal, Syrian media said, dismissing as "farfetched" Ehud Barak's call for a three-way meeting with President Clinton. Barak was quoted in an interview published Friday in Israel as saying some issues cannot be decided unless he sits down with Assad and Clinton.

Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Abdullah is scheduled to visit Baghdad and Cairo this week, continuing a flurry of high-level Middle East diplomacy aimed at clearing the way for an emergency summit and the strongest show of Arab unity in decades. The main obstacles: a long-standing rift between Syria and Iraq and the seven-year-old feud between Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat and Syrian President Hafez Assad, who has supported PLO rebels bent on ousting Arafat.

President Hafez Assad said Sunday that there is still hope for achieving a Middle East peace settlement but only one clearly based on U.N. resolutions. In remarks shortly before the departure of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak for Libya after talks in Damascus, the Syrian leader accused Israel of blocking peace. Assad's comments were the first in public since the fourth visit to the region in two months by Secretary of State James A.

Syrian President Hafez Assad and Chairman Yasser Arafat of the Palestine Liberation Organization met Monday for the first time since their split in 1983, but there were indications that they failed to resolve all differences in their feud. "We made a big step forward, but it's a long road," said a Palestinian source after the three-hour, 40-minute meeting at the presidential palace.

Hafez Assad finds humor in my wife's murder. He can do this, with impunity, because he thinks that her memory, that justice for her death, vanished in the back rooms of Washington. He may be right. Assad is the dictator of Syria. He is also the Bush Administration's new friend in the Middle East. My wife, Hanne-Maria, was a victim of state-sponsored terrorism. She was killed at the age of 26 when a bomb blew up Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, on Dec. 21, 1988.

Tens of thousands of grief-stricken young Syrians dressed in black filled the streets of this capital Sunday to mourn President Hafez Assad and chant fealty to his son Bashar, who was hastily put in command of the armed forces, an important step in consolidating his hold on power. The appointment of the 34-year-old as army chief after an immediate promotion from colonel to lieutenant general was a precursor to his investiture as president.

Standing under a huge portrait of his late father, Bashar Assad assumed Syria's presidency before a cheering legislature Monday and quickly rejected Western-style democracy and territorial concessions to Israel. Assad, a 34-year-old former eye doctor and the chosen successor of Hafez Assad, addressed parliament after a swearing-in ceremony that finalized his smooth ascent to power. He pledged to carry on his father's policies.

Frustrated with Israel's suggestions for resuming talks, Syrian President Hafez Assad said Wednesday that he sees no "glimpse of hope" for Mideast peace as long as Israel refuses to give up occupied land. Assad's comments were his first response to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's recent suggestions for reopening peace talks suspended in March amid a series of terrorist bombings in Israel.

Secretary of State Warren Christopher met with Syrian President Hafez Assad on Saturday to discuss Israeli proposals to break a deadlock in peace talks between the two nations. Christopher delivered to Assad a proposal for Israel to withdraw in stages from the strategic Golan Heights and security plans to ensure that the area is not used for attacks on Israeli villages. Christopher also carried a list of complaints. They included U.S.