Amid reports of a deterioration in the health of Syria's President Hafez Assad, his son, Bashar, is said to be moving energetically to assert himself as his only conceivable successor. The internal upheaval is overshadowing American-led efforts to mediate a resumption in peace talks between Syria and Israel.
Bashar Assad - a former ophthalmologist once considered an unsuitable candidate for president, and thrust centre-stage only following the death in a 1994 car accident of his charismatic elder brother, Basil - is apparently taking an increasingly prominent role in Syrian domestic affairs.
He is said to have personally sacked several senior military officials for alleged corruption, and last week reportedly sent his own forces on a search-and-arrest mission to the beach city of Latakia - where several hundred men loyal to his uncle, Rifaat, are concentrated. This confrontation, reports of which first appeared in the London-based Mideast Mirror, is said to still be unresolved. Bashar Assad's motivation in initiating it, according to most analysts, is to illustrate that Rifaat, sacked a year-and-a-half ago as the country's vice-president and now mainly resident in France, has been decisively outflanked in the succession stakes.
President Assad has for years been rumoured to be in failing health, and yet has always emerged to confound those who believed his rule was coming to an end. But Mr Assad, who has run his country since 1970, is now 68, and is reportedly suffering from heart and other health problems.
The reports from Damascus come as the United States works to find a formula for bringing Israeli and Syrian negotiators back to the peace table. When Ehud Barak was elected Israel's Prime Minister in May, he and President Assad exchanged a series of compliments, and a swift resumption of the talks, which stalled in 1996, was seen as likely. Crucially, for the first time, Israel had a leader publicly intimating readiness to relinquish the entire Golan Heights, captured from Syria in 1967.
Lately, though, the optimism has faded. Israeli officials are publicly expressing doubts about the Syrian readiness for peace. Israeli President Ezer Weizman observed on Monday that Israel "shouldn't go running after Assad". And the Syrian state media have this week castigated Mr Barak's government for expanding Jewish settlements and questioned its commitment to peace.
Theoretically, the key stumbling block is over the precise terms for resuming talks. Syria claims Israel agreed in the last, stalled negotiations to give up the Golan, and wants this restated as a precondition. Israel insists no such promise was ever made, and wants the parties to return to the table with no preconditions.
But argument over these modalities conceals the real dilemma, with which the Syrians, in particular, still seem to be wrestling - whether the time and circumstances are right for a full peace deal. After all, both sides know the price: for Israel, what Mr Barak has called a "very painful" compromise on the Golan; for Syria, the complex commitment to normalised relations with the Jewish state.
The US Secretary of State, Ms Madeleine Albright, is searching for a way forward, and there have been reports in Jerusalem this week that President Clinton may attempt a mediating mission to the region.
Mr Barak's principal aide, Mr Danny Yatom, said yesterday he thought the talks would resume soon. But everything, it seems, now depends on President Assad's state of mind, and state of health.
AFP adds: Israel will not withdraw its troops unilaterally from south Lebanon, the Deputy Defence Minister, Mr Ephraim Sneh, said yesterday. "We did not fight together over the years just in order to get up and leave Lebanon unilaterally, without an agreement or an arrangement," Mr Sneh told Israeli army and South Lebanon Army (SLA) officers in the Israeli-occupied zone.
Mr Sneh's spokesman told AFP that the Minister had assured the SLA that "under no circumstances" would Israel withdraw unilaterally from the zone.