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:
“I used to think of death ... like I suppose soldiers think of it: it was a possible thing that I could well avoid by my skill.”
—Stendhal [Marie Henri Beyle] (1783–1842)
“If it be aught toward the general good,
Set honor in one eye, and death i’th’ other,
And I will look on both indifferently;
For let the gods so speed me as I love
The name of honor more than I fear death.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“Since the death instinct exists in the heart of everything that lives, since we suffer from trying to repress it, since everything that lives longs for rest, let us unfasten the ties that bind us to life, let us cultivate our death wish, let us develop it, water it like a plant, let it grow unhindered. Suffering and fear are born from the repression of the death wish.”
—Eugène Ionesco (b. 1912)