Appointment in Damascus

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Unfortunately, Assad seems unable to make them. In our interview, he evaded the question of closing Palestinian "rejectionist" group offices in Damascus. "If you're an American and I don't want you here, should I send you to Africa or to the U.S., your country? ...

That's what I told [Assistant Secretary of State William] Burns: Where should I send [the Palestinian radicals]? To the Mediterranean, on a boat?" But he also claimed there were no Palestinian extremist offices in Damascus. "They have houses. They live in the houses, meet with people in the houses. That's what they call offices ... They don't have members in Syria; all their members are in Palestine. The only thing they used to do was call in the media to express their position."

Assad was also firmly evasive about cooperating with the U.S. in rounding up Iraqis supporting the insurgency from Syrian territory.

In January the U.S. had given Assad a list of 34 wanted men assumed to be in Syria. "Many of these names we don't know," Assad told me.

"What does his face look like? What's his real name? Maybe he's using a fake name or a fake passport. You should give us precise information because we can't find them."

This turned out to be a creatively incomplete answer. A few hours earlier, the Iraqis had announced that Saddam's half-brother Sabawi Ibrahim al-Hassan al-Tikriti had been captured in Syria, reportedly with the cooperation of Syrian authorities. Unaware of the Iraqi announcement during the interview, I later tried—unsuccessfully—to get a response from the President. The Syrian Information Ministry denied the Iraqi account, but a prominent Syrian official told me that al-Hassan was "personally responsible for the killing of thousands of Syrians during the 1980s, when he was associated with Iraqi intelligence. He was found hiding with a tribe near the Iraqi border and expelled from Syria. He was arrested in Iraq by Iraqis."

Perhaps. But why the elaborate public gymnastics by the Syrian government to avoid the appearance of cooperation with the U.S.? A succession of Syrians offered me the same explanation: Assad—or perhaps the necklace of security and Baath Party officials who surround Assad—didn't want to appear to be caving to U.S. pressure.

"The only way for Bashar to show strength now," said a close associate of the President, "is to be extremely decisive. Leave Lebanon. Reform our government. It's time for leadership."

Enlightened leadership seemed a possibility when Bashar Assad inherited office in 2000. He promised a more open society. He brought intellectuals and free-market economists into the government, but they were quickly overwhelmed by the Baathist old guard. Soon the multiple, overlapping Syrian police and intelligence agencies—a Byzantine web that entangles both Syria and Lebanon—seemed to regain control of the President as well. Dozens of "Damascus Spring" democracy advocates were tossed in jail. "Reform is not like pushing a button," Assad told me. "When there's trouble externally, it will affect Syria ... If you don't have peace, you have to spend most of your money on the army and security issues. All these factors won't make reform fast. It will definitely be slow. We are living under tension ... You can't have reform under tension."

But it isn't easy to repeal the promise of freedom, especially in a country where satellite dishes sprout from almost every rooftop.

People speak more openly in Syria than they have in the past. The President's allies are candid, if not yet quotable, about their disappointment in him. Yet even Assad's reform-minded opponents seem to believe that he remains the best hope for change. "I am a doctor," said Kamal Labwani, a Damascus Spring activist recently released from jail. "The President is a doctor. Does he think we'll be able to live like this another 40 years? I don't think so."

Labwani wanted me to ask Assad why he had been imprisoned. "I didn't throw him in jail," Assad told me. "I don't do everything in this country." It was an admission his father never would have made. The President's body language was more ophthalmologist than dictator. He sat hunched deep in a black leather couch. There was no physical sense of power or menace to the man, no sociopathic cool, just consternation. When I asked him who killed Rafiq Hariri, he seemed stricken: "The most important question is, Who had the benefit of it?

As President, I can't tell you this country or that. But who suffered most from it? Syria. Syria was the biggest loser. The Lebanese, definitely, they lost ... But Syria lost more." And later, as he was escorting me to the door, he said, "Please send this message: I am not Saddam Hussein. I want to cooperate." The plea was at least partly believable. Obviously, he is not Saddam Hussein. It was also plausible that he wants to cooperate. It just didn't seem very likely that he could.

—With reporting by George Baghdadi/ Damascus