WMDs claims baseless, says Damascus
WASHINGTON, April 15: Syria on Tuesday again denied it has weapons of mass destruction and accused Washington of double standards over its open support of Israel, the strongest military power in the Middle East.
“We don’t have weapons of mass destruction,” Syria’s ambassador to the United Nations, Rostom al-Zoubi, said, describing the US charges as baseless.
“It is Israel, which has a big arsenal of weapons of mass destruction,” the envoy told CNN.
“Why focus on Syria at this time, forgetting Israel. This is... double standard.”
As the US-led war on Iraq draws to a close, the administration of US President George W. Bush has turned its attention to Syria, accusing it of “state terrorism, developing weapons of mass destruction and harbouring fugitive officials from neighbouring Iraq.”—AFP
OIL PIPELINE SHUT: US forces have shut down a pipeline sending oil from Iraq to Syria, US Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld said on Tuesday, adds our correspondent.
The move came after multiple warnings of possible sanctions against Syria from the Bush administration, which accuses Damascus of giving safe haven to remnants of Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi government, and of developing weapons of mass destruction.
Damascus rejected the accusations, calling the charges “threats and falsifications.”
Mr Rumsfeld said at the daily Pentagon briefing that coalition forces shut down the oil pipeline, but that he was not sure whether it was the only pipeline to Syria and couldn’t say whether oil is still flowing between Iraq and Syria.
The United States claims that Syria has been receiving up to 200,000 barrels of oil per day through the pipeline — in violation of the UN sanctions against Iraq.
The news came amid reports that Washington would explore imposing sanctions on Damascus for allegedly allowing Iraqi officials to flee into Syrian territory.