Coup threat seen pushing Assad toward talks with Israel

CAIRO -- Syrian President Hafez Assad was the target of a failed coup earlier this month, an Arab newspaper said.

The Paris-based Al Watan al Arabi said Assad refused to attend the funeral of Morocco's King Hassan II because Syrian security services received information that a coup would be launched during the president's trip to Rabat.

The newspaper said the United States informed Damascus of the coup attempt. Al Watan said U.S. officials felt the coup attempt would undermine Syria's attempts to negotiate with Israel and show Damascus as too unstable to arrive at an agreement.

On Monday, the London-based Al Sharq al-Awsat newspaper quoted Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine chief Nayef Hawatmeh as saying that last month Palestinian opposition factions to PLO chairman Yasser Arafat clashed in refugee camps in Beirut and Damascus. He said people were killed in the clash and this led to a Syrian demand that the factions end their military struggle against Israel.

Hawatmeh said the fighting concerned efforts by Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat to woo opposition groups to join efforts to draft Palestinian positions in advance of final status talks with Israel.

Over the last month, Syria's media have raised suggestions that Israel regards Damascus as weak and unstable. Israeli sources had reported signs of instability in Assad's regime and suggested this was the key reason it was interested in reviving peace talks with the Jewish state.

Assad's aides told Western diplomats that the president had cancelled his plans to attend Hassan's funeral in Rabat because Prime Minister Ehud Barak was also to arrive. But the diplomats rejected this, pointing to Israel's attendance at the funeral of Jordan's King Hussein. The 69-year-old Assad was also said to have been feeling weak lately.

The newspaper did not provide details of the coup attempt. But it said that Assad's regime was filled with rival factions.

Western diplomats, however, said over the last month Assad appears to have given his son, Bashar, more diplomatic duties. Col. Bashar Assad is currently on a tour of the Gulf, where on Monday he is to hold talks with Kuwait's emir.

The 34-year-old Bashar told the London-based Al Wasat magazine that resistance groups now fighting Israel will have to lay down their arms once a peace agreement is reached with the Jewish state. This would include Hizbullah.

"When the reasons which led to the birth of the resistance wither away, its followers will return to normal life and sacrifice themselves for their country in other ways, that is, once they achieve the victory they had hoped for," he said. "A certain reality imposed the taking of a choice on them. The resistance was not launched out of a love of combat or bloodshed without any objective."