April 04, 2007	Wednesday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 15, 1428

WASHINGTON: When Democratic Speaker of the US House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi announced last week that she would visit Damascus to meet with Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad, the White House called the trip “a really bad idea”.

While Pelosi said she had “no illusions” for her talks with Assad, she did express “great hope”. And why shouldn’t she?

With the US bogged down in a never-ending war in Iraq, the Democratic Congressional opposition is becoming increasingly emboldened, last week passing a bill that supports the withdrawal of US troops from the country by March next year.

Vulnerable US allies such as Saudi Arabia, worried about the threat of Iranian hegemony in the region, are positioning themselves for the inevitable US withdrawal and its aftermath. Since Syria plays a significant role in Iraq, and supports Hamas and Hezbollah, it should come as no surprise that these days, all roads lead to Damascus.

Pelosi is leading a bipartisan delegation on a weeklong tour of Israel, Lebanon, Syria and Saudi Arabia, that is scheduled to include a meeting with Assad. She is making the trip in part to identify herself and the opposition Democrats with the conclusions of the Iraq Study Group (ISG), the Congressionally-appointed panel co-chaired by former Republican Secretary of State James Baker. The ISG’s report, released in December 2006, recommended that Washington reach out to Damascus and Tehran for help in stabilising Iraq. The George W. Bush administration initially rejected the group’s recommendations and has continued to try to isolate both countries, agreeing only to talk with Syria about the estimated one million Iraqi refugees currently living in Damascus. The US has cut off most-high level contacts with the Syrian government since Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri was assassinated in February 2005. A United Nations prosecutor has implicated Syrian officials in Hariri’s death.

“It sends the wrong message to have high-level US officials going there to have photo opportunities that Assad then exploits,” spokeswoman Dana Perino said during a news conference, reiterating White House objections to Pelosi’s trip.

Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah, who has ostracised Assad since the Hariri assassination, also appears to be warming to the Syrian leader. He graciously welcomed him back into the fold at the Arab League’s Riyadh summit last week. Abdullah’s engagement with Assad underscores Syria’s importance as a regional player in the Arab orbit, according to Middle East experts.

“There seems to be, at least on an atmospheric level, some improvement in Syrian-Saudi relations at the summit,” Gregory Gause, a specialist on Saudi Arabia based at the University of Vermont, told in an interview.

“The Saudis continue to be annoyed with Damascus... All the same, the Saudis understand that for Middle Eastern tensions to be reduced, Syria must be brought into negotiations,” said John Landis, a Syria expert at the University of Oklahoma, as quoted in the Christian Science Monitor on March 7.

Even so, Abdullah continues to put pressure on Syria by increasing Saudi influence in Palestinian political affairs. In February, Saudi Arabia hosted a meeting between Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas leader Khaled Meshal, who lives in Damascus. The meeting, which produced an agreement on a Palestinian national unity government, “served as a calculated swipe at Damascus by undercutting Syria’s influence on Palestinian affairs,” according to the Christian Science Monitor.

Syria remains in the political orbit of Iran. Both countries maintain a 27-year relationship that forms the nexus of an anti-Western alliance that includes Hezbollah and Hamas. The eventual US exit from Iraq may potentially change the nature of that alliance and bring Syria and Saudi Arabia closer together.

At the Arab League summit, Abdullah criticised the US-led “illegitimate foreign occupation” of Iraq, a comment that may be interpreted by some in Washington as a sharp rebuke of the Bush administration’s attempts to gain support for the Shia-led government in Baghdad.

Unlike the United States, Saudi Arabia must live with neighbouring Iraq and Iran. By calling the US occupation of Iraq “illegal”, King Abdullah is announcing a new policy in Iraq, “one designed for the post-American phase in Iraq and one that must be coordinated with Syria,” wrote Landis on his widely read blog, Syriacomment.com. With an eventual US withdrawal, “the alliance between Iran and Syria will face serious strains,” wrote Landis. “It is in Syria’s interest to team up with Saudi Arabia in order to tip the scales of power in Iraq toward its Sunni community.”

In order to woo Syria, Abdullah must also be willing to support Syrian interests in Lebanon, which includes reconciling Fouad Siniora’s government with the opposition parties led by Hezbollah, and advance Syria’s goal to reclaim the Golan Heights, a strategic plateau that Israel captured from Syria in the 1967 Six-Day War.

Despite the apparent reconciliation between Syria and Saudi Arabia, the leaders were unable to settle the political crisis in Lebanon that has brought much of the country to a halt, according to a recent New York Times article.

Attempts by Dr Alon Liel, former head of Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Syrian businessmen to create the unofficial framework for a peace agreement between Israel and Syria may help pull Assad’s government away from its relationship with Iran. A series of secret meetings between both countries produced an unofficial framework that recommended the Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights in return for Syria’s agreement to cease its support for Hamas and Hezbollah, distance itself from Iran, and make efforts to bring peace to Iraq.

“The Syrian representatives told us time and again that their alliance with Iran is unnatural, but they maintain friendly relations with the Islamic Republic because they feel they don’t have an alternative,” Liel told an Israel Policy Forum audience.

Instead of engaging Syria, the Bush administration has launched a campaign to “isolate and embarrass” Assad in anticipation of the country’s upcoming April parliamentary elections, a plan that has been “in the works for months,” according to State Department officials and Syrian exiles, as quoted in the Pittsburg-Post Gazette.

According to the same report, some officials say the US campaign aims to weaken or even overthrow Assad so that he can’t stop the creation of an international tribunal to investigate the Hariri assassination. The same officials say the campaign “bears the imprint” of Elliot Abrams, a deputy national security adviser in charge of promoting Bush’s global democracy agenda. The State Department has also stepped up its rhetoric.

“The United States is deeply concerned that the Syrian regime will again fail its people by not holding free and fair elections,” said spokesman Sean McCormack.—Dawn/The IPS News Service