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Powell Welcomes Pledge by Syria to Curb Militants - Empire? - Global Policy Forum Powell Welcomes Pledge by Syria to Curb Militants
By Brian Knowlton
International Herald Tribune
May 5, 2003
Secretary of State Colin Powell welcomed a Syrian promise to close the Damascus offices of three militant anti-Israel groups, but added pointedly on Sunday that Washington wanted to see action, not just words. In three television appearances, Powell was cautious about the future of United States-Syria relations. But his three-hour meeting Saturday with President Bashar Assad, and his subsequent comments, appeared to thaw slightly the chilly relationship that had emerged after the fall of Baghdad.
The failure of Syria to cooperate on a range of matters will have ‘‘consequences,’’ said Powell, who mentioned only possible economic sanctions. While in Damascus, he said he was not there to warn of war. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, whose comments had raised fears of a confrontation with Syria, carefully deferred to Powell when asked Sunday about Syria.
On the CBS News program ‘‘Face the Nation,’’ Powell said Syria had provided ‘‘helpful’’ and ‘‘useful’’ cooperation in the war on terrorism, and that the closing of the Damascus offices, sought for years by Washington, would be ‘‘significant.’’ While he was in Damascus, he told reporters that the issue of war ‘‘is not on the table.’’ But the United States will be watching Syria to see whether it followed through, he said repeatedly. It was unclear whether, or when, those offices would be closed. (Page 3)
‘‘I welcome what he said he was going to do,’’ Powell said of Assad’s assurances. More important, Powell said, is what Assad ‘‘actually does’’ to prevent former Iraqi officials from entering or hiding in Syria, to halt any development of weapons of mass destruction, to stop weapons shipments, and to cooperate with moves toward regional peace.
Powell also made these points in his television appearances: Before progress can be made on the road map for Middle East peace, the new Palestinian prime minister, Mahmud Abbas, must ‘‘get the violence under control.’’ At the same time, Powell said that when he visits Israel this week he will tell Prime Minister Ariel Sharon that ‘‘settlement activity has to end.’’ The characterization by Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker, of the visit to Syria as ‘‘ludicrous,’’ was a ‘‘blunderbuss attack’’ that ‘‘missed the State Department and hit the president,’’ who had sent Powell to Damascus.
While the United States had warned other countries — including Iran, North Korea and Cuba — against supporting terrorism, their situations differed from the realities in Iraq that had provoked war. Powell said he had told Assad that the United States expected ‘‘a new attitude’’ from Syria to reflect the changed realities in the region since the fall of Iraq’s president, Saddam Hussein.
Assad, in turn, told him that an overall Middle East settlement should consider Syrian interests, above all, a return of the Golan Heights. In Syria, state-run radio said Sunday that progress on the Middle East would depend heavily on the United States pressuring Israel to return the land it had seized in the 1967 Middle East war, Reuters reported from Damascus.
Powell’s visit to Damascus represented a gamble on direct diplomacy with a country that drew deep resentment in the United States after reports that it was harboring fleeing Iraqi leaders and permitting militant fighters to cross into Iraq to attack U.S. forces. Some members of Congress have proposed legislation to further isolate or punish Damascus.
Powell did not identify the three anti-Israel organizations whose offices would be closed. A senior State Department official said that they were Hamas, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Whether those offices would be permanently closed remained unknown.
Powell, speaking on the ABC News program ‘‘This Week,’’ said Assad had assured him that the offices would be closed and the groups’ ability to communicate from Syria restricted. He acknowledged, however, that Syria had gone back on an earlier promise to halt the flow of Iraqi oil into Syria. Powell played down suggestions that Syria or some other country might be next on a purported U.S. list for military intervention. Asked about Bush’s comment last week that any country harboring terrorists ‘‘will be confronted,’’ Powell said, ‘‘You don’t always reach automatically for the military tool.’’
Asked about a widely reported comment by Gingrich, now is a member of a Pentagon advisory board, that the Damascus visit was ‘‘ludicrous’’ and that the State Department was in disarray, Powell said that Gingrich was in effect ‘‘accusing the president of a ludicrous act.’’
Rumsfeld side-stepped when asked whether he agreed with Gingrich. He called it ‘‘baloney’’ to suggest that he knew what Gingrich had planned to say, and added that he had not read the text. As for Powell’s trip to Damascus, Rumsfeld said it had been Bush’s decision. ‘‘Clearly,’’ Rumsfeld said, ‘‘it was the proper thing to do and it was also the proper time for it.’’
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