For most people, respect means being taken seriously, a first step towards friendship and love. When President Clinton expressed respect for the just deceased Syrian leader Hafez al-Assad, it had to do with trust in international relations. PNS commentator Franz Schurmann, emeritus professor at UC-Berkeley, has written on international affairs since the early 1970s.

"While we had our disagreements, I always respected him."

This was President Clinton's comment on the death of Hafez al-Assad. Clinton, of course, knows that in February, 1982, Assad committed mass murder. For 27 days, starting on February 2, 1982, Assad ordered the shelling of Hama, one of Syria's major cities some 150 miles north of Damascus. According to the Syrian Human Rights Committee that operates outside of Syria a third of the city was completely destroyed. More than 20,000 civilians were killed. Another 15,000 were never accounted for. Why?

Only a few months earlier, On October 6, 1981, members of the Muslim Brotherhood had assassinated Egyptian president Anwar Sadat. The Brotherhood had been founded during the 1930s in Egypt by Hassan Al-Bann who was allegedly killed on orders of Egypt's General Gamal Abdul-Nasser. The destroyed portion of Hama had become a major center of a Brotherhood branch in Syria. Clearly, Assad struck massively and brutally to prevent Sadat's fate from befalling him.

When great leaders say they do or don't respect another leader, they are really talking about trust. Fear and greed shape a good part of international relations, especially among the great powers. But fear freezes relations and greed leads to conflict. Trust is necessary to move those relations in productive directions. On the other hand for ordinary people, respect means being taken seriously -- a vital first step towards friendship and love. When Clinton said he respected Assad despite their disagreements, he also had something concrete in mind. The unexpectedly early Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon cleared the way for a final settlement between Israel, Syria and Lebanon. Though the Western media wrote off the Clinton-Assad Geneva meeting in May as a "failure," Arab sources called it a success. Assad was ready for an agreement, they said, but wanted deeds, not words, from the Israelis.

Since 1982, respect for Assad had grown in Israel and the West. One reason was simply that he was firmly in power, but the biggest reason was that he could be trusted.

He was seen as never straying far from his basic values and goals -- that was evident in his iron-clad position on the Golan Heights. He demanded that Israel return every square inch taken from Syria during the June, 1967 war.

On the other hand, he was also shrewd and flexible. Consider his relations with his brother Rifa'at. Although Rifa'at was his chief enforcer in the Hama massacre, in later years he began to drift towards the Brotherhood. He grew a beard and went regularly to the mosque. But Hafez decided the Brotherhood could be useful to himself and approached them on his own. He placed Rifa'at under house arrest in their home town Latakia on the Mediterranean, implying an effort to distance himself from the massacre.

Another instance of his political astuteness came when he ordered Syrian troops to enter Lebanon -- ostensibly to end the bloody sectarian war going on there, but principally to save the Christian right-wing Phalangists from defeat by the rising Druze and Shi'a leftist forces. In this way he rescued Lebanon's fragile sectarian power balance and checked growing Lebanese nationalism.

Hafez al-Assad, who suffered from various illnesses during his 30 years in power, had long been preparing his succession. When his eldest son, Basil, was killed in the early 1990s in a car accident, he started grooming his son Beshar as successor. Washington hopes Beshar will soon re-enter the peace process. But it is too early for Clinton and Beshar, separated by 20 years in age, to have trust in each other. Israeli and Lebanese leaders, too, had respect for Hafez al-Assad and it will take time for them to size up the 34-year-old Beshar. But before his death Hafez had already made some key changes that set the stage for peace. Economic experts who want an opening up to the world to revitalize Syria's stagnant economy now dominate its government. Economic opening up can easily lead to greed. But Hafez al-Assad did a lot to bring down the walls of fear surrounding Syria. That bodes well for both Lebanon and Syria. And so even in death the trust Hafez the Lion of Syria fostered has a chance of bringing peace and prosperity to the region.