Syrian situation will be dealt with, warns Bush
By Anton La Guardia, Diplomatic Editor and David Rennie in Washington
(Filed: 14/04/2003)
President George W Bush upped the rhetorical stakes in Washington's confrontation with Syria yesterday as a flurry of diplomatic visitors headed for the Middle East.
Mr Bush accused Damascus of possessing chemical weapons and repeated his demand that the country refuses sanctuary to members of Saddam Hussein's regime.
President Assad
"The Syrian government needs to co-operate with the United States and our coalition partners and not harbour any Ba'athists, military officials or people who need to be held to account," he said.
In comments that will raise expectations that President Bashir Assad may become America's next target for "regime change", Mr Bush said the Syrian "situation" would have to be dealt with after Iraq. "I think we believe that there are chemical weapons in Syria. Each situation requires a different response. Of course, first things first. We're in Iraq now," he said.
A senior Syrian diplomat in Washington said Damascus was ready to accept international weapons inspections as long as they also inspected Israel's arsenal of weapons of mass destruction.
Britain has chosen less antagonistic tactics, sending Mike O'Brien, Foreign Office minister responsible for the Middle East, for discreet talks with the Syrian regime.
Tony Blair has invested heavily in improving relations with Syria, seeing President Assad as a moderniser.
As Mr O'Brien set out yesterday for Teheran and then Damascus, Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, took off for a tour of four Gulf countries - Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.
Mr Straw's trip is meant to thank Arab governments who helped the war effort and discuss the interim government in Iraq and the efforts to revive peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians.
British ministers will be competing for influence in the Arab world with Dominique de Villepin, the French foreign minister, who visited Syria at the weekend and called for an end to American "polemics" against the Damascus regime.
During a stop in Beirut, he declared: "The time is not correct. The time is to work together. The time is for consultation, for dialogue and we should be very careful in putting all our energies to find solutions because we do have enough problems."
Syria has been the most outspoken Arab critic of the war and the Bush administration has elevated Damascus to be the fourth member of the "axis of evil" after Iraq, Iran and North Korea.
For several days, all wings of the Bush administration - from Donald Rumsfeld, the famously blunt defence secretary, to Colin Powell, the more diplomatic secretary of state - have been pounding Syria with a verbal barrage of threats and warnings.
America, which has long accused Syria of supporting Palestinian and Lebanese militant groups and of developing chemical and biological weapons, has pointed the finger at Damascus for helping the Iraqi regime.
There have been reports, some from Israeli intelligence, that Saddam might have sent his banned arsenals of mass destruction to Syria for safekeeping.
Syrian officials have hotly denied such accusations, pointing to the decades-old enmity between the rival branches of the Ba'ath Party in Baghdad and Damascus.
However, there has been a rapprochement in recent years and Syrian officials recently said their "strategic interest" was to see America defeated in Iraq.
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