WASHINGTON: While US President George W. Bush appeared this week to reject suggestions that Washington directly engage the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, pressure both here and in the region for Washington to work out some accommodation with Damascus is rising.
While never officially named to what Washington calls the “axis of evil”, Syria has received the same “silent treatment” as Washington has given its two surviving members, Iran and North Korea, since the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in February 2005.
But Syria’s geo-strategic relevance, particularly in the wake of last summer’s war between Israel and Hezbollah and growing popular sentiment here for withdrawing the more than 140,000 US troops bogged down in Iraq, are making it increasingly difficult to reject appeals for a new tack.
“In all of the major challenges we have in the Middle East — Iraq, the Arab-Israeli conflict, the role of Hezbollah and Hamas, Iran — things are more complicated without Syria’s cooperation,” Edward Djerejian, who served as ambassador to Damascus under Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush, recently told the National Journal.
That reasoning is being made by Republican “realists”, such as Djerejian, who currently heads the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy in Houston, and Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Richard Lugar, as well as some of Washington’s closest European allies, notably Britain.
A number of prominent Israelis, including even cabinet-level members in Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s government, who believe that Assad’s recent appeals via Germany’s Spiegel magazine and the BBC, as well as other media, for a peace agreement with the Jewish state should be tested, have also called for Washington to engage Assad, if for no other reason than to try to pry Damascus loose from its alliance with Iran and Hezbollah.
“Assad is very keen to get the Golan [Heights] back [from Israel], but he is even more keen to engage the United States,” said David Kimche, a former head of Israel’s foreign ministry and president of the Israel Council on Foreign Relations, at a dinner here earlier this week sponsored by the New America Foundation.
“It is in America’s interest to wean away Syria from Iran’s embrace, [a move that] would also be appreciated by moderate Arabs” in the region, as well, he said, adding that renewed engagement between Washington and Damascus could also facilitate the resumption of talks between Israelis and Palestinians.
The fact that the White House cleared a meeting last month between former secretary of state James Baker and Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem in New York, has added to speculation that Bush may prove more flexible than he has to date, especially after next month’s mid-term elections.
Asked about his willingness to “work with” Syria, as well as Iran, if it would improve the situation in Iraq at a press conference on Wednesday, Bush nonetheless echoed the administration’s customary mantra that both countries “understand full well” what they have to do to get back in Washington’s good graces.
“Our message to Syria is consistent,” he said. “Do not undermine the (Prime Minister Hanna) Siniora government (in Lebanon)... help Israel get back the prisoner that was captured by Hamas; don’t allow Hamas and Hezbollah to plot attacks against democracies in the Middle East; help inside of Iraq. They know our position,” he declared, suggesting that all of these were preconditions for the kind of engagement that the critics have been urging.
Behind Bush’s latest statement, however, lies a familiar divide within the administration.—-Dawn/IPS News Service
