March 07, 2007	Wednesday	Safar 17, 1428

DAMASCUS: When Syria takes a seat along the United States at a meeting to discuss Iraq this week, it will have something to offer to stop the chaos, but Damascus has set a price for its cooperation.

Damascus wants Washington, Israel’s ally, to help it regain the Golan Heights, occupied by Israel in 1967, and resolve a standoff over a UN-backed tribunal and an inquiry that implicated Syrian officials in the 2005 killing of former premier Rafik al-Hariri.

The killing pushed Syria to withdraw its troops from Lebanon after two decades of military presence and most Western countries shunned Damascus as a pariah state.

“The Americans want our help on Iraq, but still try and embarrass us at every turn, saying Syria knows what it needs to do while offering us nothing in return,” a Syrian official said.

“Everything America has done so far has been to promote Israel’s interest and sectarian tension in the region,” he said.

Deputy Foreign Minister Fayssal al-Mekdad is expected to head Syria’s delegation to the conference in Baghdad on March 10. Iran and the permanent United Nations Security Council members will also attend, despite US allegations that Damascus and its ally Tehran are helping the insurgency.

It will be the first high-level meeting attended by US and Syrian diplomats since early 2005, when a US official visited Damascus to urge it to stop fighters from allegedly crossing its border into Iraq.

Syria has made it clear that before considering helping Washington and Britain, its own interests must be addressed.

Despite being shunned by Washington for years, Damascus remained confident the United States would eventually seek its help to solve the upheaval ushered by its 2003 invasion of Iraq.

One million Iraqi refugees have been driven to Syria since.

Syrian officials say a timetable for a US pullout would help convince insurgents to stop attacks and raise Syria’s influence with them. Washington has refused to set a schedule.

“No one is thinking about imposing defeat on US forces. On the contrary, we are trying to find an honourable withdrawal for them,” Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem told Just World News website.

Moualem has been pushing to adopt a friendlier tone to the Baghdad government – a joint declaration in January condemned rebel attacks on the U.S.-backed Iraqi army and security forces – but hardline officials also influence Syrian policy.

Since the US invasion of Iraq, Iraqi officials say Syria has been hosting large numbers of former intelligence operatives and officers in the now defunct Iraqi army.

It allowed a meeting in January of senior members of Iraq’s Baath Party, which ruled Iraq for 35 years, and held talks recently with Sunni tribal leaders from the Ramadi province to gauge prospects of initiating national reconciliation.

Syria has also been cultivating Sheikh Harith al-Dari, an influential Sunni religious leader opposed to the US presence.

No one doubts that Saddam’s former officer core present in Syria has links to the insurgents.

“Syria is a rear base for former officers,” Damascus-based Iraqi parliamentary deputy Mishaan al-Jubouri said.

“Even if Dari asks the resistance to stop its operations without a promise of US withdrawal and an overhaul of the political system devised under occupation they will not listen,” said Jubouri, who fell out with Baghdad’s Shia-led government and is wanted in Iraq on corruption charges he denies.

Iraqi politicians who visited Syria recently said that Syria together with Iran could play a main role in stopping the violence by pressuring groups they influence – mainly Sunni rebels in the case of Syria and Shia fighters loyal to populist cleric Moqtada al-Sadr in the case of Iran.

Although no one has a grip of all the groups behind attacks on US forces or sectarian violence, Western diplomats say Syria’s intelligence gathering capability, its links to a range of Iraqi groups and border with Iraq ensure it can help the United States and Britain on the ground if it chooses to.

They say a deal between Syria and the United States could emerge in the long term with the secular government in Damascus starting to worry about the spread of Al Qaeda sympathisers.

“Conditionality will not work,” a Western diplomat said.

“Syria can change its approach of supporting all sides in Iraq, stop infuriating America, do more effort to sealing the border and then go to Washington and say ‘look what we have done’.”—Reuters