(Ha'aretz) Zvi Bar'el - Bashar Assad has been ruling Syria for almost three years, and the economic and diplomatic paralysis is spreading in every branch of the country. The annual growth rate, 2.8 percent, is almost identical to the natural population growth, and the income per capita hardly reaches $1,000 a year. Last week, French Foreign Affairs Minister Dominique de Villepin announced it was time Syria withdrew from Lebanon.
2003-05-06 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive