Patrick Seale, who is a well known British writer on Middle East Affairs, spoke on the theme of Syrian Geopolitics Under Bashar Al Asad (including Syria-Lebanon relations). Born in Ireland and educated at Oxford University, Patrick worked as a foreign correspondent in many parts of the world for Reuters and The Observer. For some fifteen years, he also ran his own literary agency and art gallery in London. He now lives in Paris and works as a journalist writing weekly articles for several newspapers among which are Al-Hayat (London), Al-Ittihad (Abu Dhabi), Gulf News (Dubai), Saudi Gazette (Jeddah), and Jeune Afrique (Paris). He is the author of several books on the Middle East including ‘The Struggle for Syria’, ‘Asad: The Struggle for the Middle East’, ‘Abu Nidal: A Gun for Hire’. Following the Gulf War of 1991, Patrick helped HRH Prince Khaled bin Sultan (now Deputy Defense Minister of Saudi Arabia) write a volume of memoirs ‘Desert Warrior’. His biography of Riad el-Solh, the first prime minister of independent Lebanon was published in 2009.