Death
By the late 1990s, Assad increasingly suffered from ill health. American diplomats said that that Assad found it difficult to remain focused and projected weariness during their meetings. It was speculated that Assad was incapable of functioning for more than two hours a day. However, his spokesperson did not respond to these speculations, and Assad's official routine in 1999 had no significant change from that of the previous decade. Assad continued to have meetings and traveled abroad occasionally; most notably he visited Moscow in July 1999. Assad's government was accustomed to working without his direct involvement in day-to-day affairs. On 10 June 2000 Assad died from a heart attack he suffered while speaking on the telephone with Lebanese prime minister Salim al-Hoss. His funeral was held three days later. Hafez al-Assad is buried with his son Bassel in a mausoleum in his hometown of Qardaha.
Read more about this topic: Hafez Al-Assad
Famous quotes containing the word death:
“Yea, worse than death: death parts both woe and joy:
From joy I part, still living in annoy.”
—Sir Philip Sidney (1554–1586)
“Death does determine life.... Once life is finished it acquires a sense; up to that point it has not got a sense; its sense is suspended and therefore ambiguous. However, to be sincere I must add that for me death is important only if it is not justified and rationalized by reason. For me death is the maximum of epicness and death.”
—Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922–1975)
“It is certainly safe, in view of the movement to the right of intellectuals and political thinkers, to pronounce the brain death of socialism.”
—Norman Tebbit (b. 1931)