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Getbig Main Boards => Politics and Political Issues Board => Topic started by: headhuntersix on July 11, 2008, 07:32:21 AM
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IS Syrian President Bashar al-Assad about to switch sides? French President Nicolas Sarkozy's entourage says yes - emphatically. Of course, it has to: Sarkozy has invited Assad to sit next to him next week in the presidential niche at the military parade for Bastille Day, France's most important public holiday.
The invitation, an honor bestowed on few foreign leaders, is intended to transform Assad from an international pariah into a partner for France and the European Union. Yet no other Western leader will touch the Syrian with a 10-foot pole. Indeed, it was France under President Jacques Chirac that led international efforts to isolate Assad.
Cynics say Sarkozy is simply thumbing his nose at his long-time tormentor Chirac. But idealists, including Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner think giving Assad a second chance is the right move, morally and politically.
Assad, in this reckoning, might be a closet reformer held in chains by the Ba'athist old guard in Damascus; helping him shake off the chains might let him fly his true colors. Assad's British education and British wife are other indications cited to show he might not be as closed to change as some imagine.
But there's also a realist explanation.
Syria's regime feels threatened on two fronts. On one are Western powers, led by America, that seem determined to push Assad's back to the wall. On the other are Iran's mullahs, spinning the cobweb of their presence in Syria. They talk of partnership, but their goal is to create a Syrian regime that shares their creed - as opposed to the current Ba'athist one, which at heart remains hostile to Khomeinism religiously and ideologically.
Even if a break with Tehran isn't imminent, Damascus doesn't want all its eggs in the Iranian basket. Ever since Bashar's father Hafez founded it, the Assad dynasty has tried to keep its options open.
At the Cold War's height, Syria allied with the Soviet Union but maintained working relations with America. From 1970, when he seized power, until his death in 2000, Hafez al-Assad was the only Arab leader to have a one-on-one meeting with every US president.
Is Bashar trying to revive his father's tradition by proving that Syria is something more than part of an Iranian hegemony in the Levant?
To win his invite for this weekend's parade on the Champs Elysee, Assad has made some concessions.