Word: damascus
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...camouflaged MiG-23 interceptor of the Syrian air force took off from a base near Damascus last week, flew on a training mission to the Golan Heights, then dropped to 164 ft. and zoomed straight into Israel. It landed on a civilian airstrip at Megiddo, 57 miles north of Jerusalem, where its pilot, Major Mohammed Bassem Adel, 34, asked for political asylum. At a press conference last week, he said he had defected because "I would like to live in a democratic state...
...stung by previous attempts to serve as a buffer among Lebanon's feuding militias, Europe and the U.S. steered clear of direct intervention, appealing instead for a campaign of international pressure to quiet the guns. The U.N. Security Council urged an immediate cease-fire. Pope John Paul II blamed Damascus for "genocide." But the pleas had little impact on a situation that is governed by passion and irrationality. Unless a cease-fire can be brokered quickly, Syria and its allies might risk an all out assault to crush the Christian forces...
...Damascus denied that any Syrian troops, who entered Lebanon as peacekeepers in 1976 and neglected to leave, had taken part in the assault. Yet plainly Syria was deeply involved. A Muslim officer who fought under Aoun stated that both Druze and Syrian forces advanced on Suq al Gharb, then turned back under heavy Christian fire, leaving 35 dead Syrians behind. In Damascus, Syrian President Hafez Assad convened representatives of various Muslim, Druze and Palestinian militias to map out a combat plan to topple Aoun. The war council aroused international concern that Syria, which has upwards of 30,000 troops inside...
...deploying two warships to the region, President Francois Mitterrand dispatched a flood of envoys to Moscow and key Arab League capitals, which command some leverage over Syria. But Mitterrand's diplomacy cut little ice in Lebanon, where France is regarded as an ally of the Maronites, or in Damascus, where France is suspect for its support of Iraq in the gulf...
...both Assad and Aoun seem bent on the same deadly gambit: Damascus hopes the violence will turn Christians against Aoun; the Maronite leader hopes it will bring intervention from the West against Syria. Meantime, it is the people of Lebanon who continue to suffer, particularly those -- Muslim and Christian alike -- who live in Beirut, where the shells have killed almost 800 and wounded over 2,000 since March. The fortunate have fled, paring the city's population from 1.5 million to just 150,000. Those who remain huddle by night in airless underground shelters, listening to the sounds of destruction...