Word: syrian
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Syrians are very happy," says Sami Moubayed, a Syrian political analyst. "I think this is what the Syrians always wanted - Suleiman." Parliament is scheduled to reconvene on December 7, when Suleiman is expected to be elected President...
...White House has begun signaling a new approach to Syrian relations - for starters, it invited Syria to last week's Annapolis peace conference to revive Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking. And Washington's overtures to Damascus, which the U.S. has repeatedly slammed for sponsoring terrorism and meddling in Lebanon and Iraq, have left pro-Western Lebanese leaders worried about being "sold out" as part of a broader U.S.-Syrian deal to stabilize the region...
...message the Americans are sending to the region is that what succeeds is terror, bombings and a total disregard for democracy," a senior member of the anti-Syrian March 14 coalition in Lebanon tells TIME. "No one is going to remove the feeling from March 14 that we have been dumped by the Americans...
...Lebanese parliament, revealed that it would back the presidential nomination of General Michel Suleiman, the commander of the Lebanese army - a candidacy that it had previously opposed. The Lebanese presidency has been vacant since November 23 when parliament failed to elect a successor to Emile Lahoud, the pro-Syrian head of state whose term ended the same day. The recent decision by March 14 to opt for Suleiman - who is seen as having close ties to the militant Shi'ite Hizballah, which spearheads the pro-Syrian opposition to the Western-backed government in Beirut - apparently caught the opposition by surprise...
...help ease months of tension between their respective allies in Lebanon. However, senior March 14 politicians tell TIME that the proposal to nominate Suleiman had arisen more than a week before Annapolis, several days before Syria even announced it would attend the peace conference. The anti-Syrian block had determined it was better to choose a President acceptable to the opposition than risk a prolonged constitutional vacuum and the threat of violence erupting in Lebanon between rival factions. "We're sure that Suleiman is better than the void," says an adviser to Saad Hariri, whose Future Movement is the largest...