Posted on 02/17/2009 4:17:20 PM PST by pissant
Syria's President Bashar al-Assad is being actively courted by the new US administration, the EU as well as fellow Arab leaders making Damascus the Middle Eastern city to visit. In a rare and exclusive interview he talks to the Guardian's Middle East editor, Ian Black, in the Syrian capital.
Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president, sits back on a smart leather sofa in his honey-coloured hilltop palace, and gestures expansively - his fists visibly unclenched - as he explains his country's indispensable role in the Middle East in the hopeful era of Barack Obama.
Assad is a busy man. Hours before the Guardian called, he had seen a senior EU commissioner and the secretary general of the Arab League. Later this week his visitors will be Senator John Kerry, the chairman of the Senate foreign relations committee and Howard Berman, a senior Congressman – reflecting the intensifying relationship between old adversaries who seem anxious to make a fresh start.
In recent months Damascus has become the Middle Eastern capital to visit: Nicolas Sarkozy, with characteristic panache, blazed the way for France and Europe; David Miliband and other EU foreign ministers followed. Turkey is also playing a key role.
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
Has Obama been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize yet?
Headline reads like a title for a gladiator movie.
Give it another month, and I’m sure he will be.
Assad's dad might've been a strongman, but junior is a giraffe-necked clown.
He’d fit right in with other Nobel winners Carter, Annan, and Arafat.
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