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:
“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)
“To fear death, my friends, is only to think ourselves wise, without being wise: for it is to think that we know what we do not know. For anything that men can tell, death may be the greatest good that can happen to them: but they fear it as if they knew quite well that it was the greatest of evils. And what is this but that shameful ignorance of thinking that we know what we do not know?”
—Socrates (469–399 B.C.)
“Or I shall live your epitaph to make,
Or you survive when I in earth am rotten;
From hence your memory death cannot take,
Although in me each part will be forgotten.
Your name from hence immortal life shall have,
Though I, once gone, to all the world must die:”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)