Bush warns Damascus against safe havens
Washington Times ^ | Saturday, April 12, 2003 | By Bill Sammon
President Bush yesterday warned Syria not to give sanctuary to Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein or his supporters and urged Damascus to expel any war criminals who may have already fled across the Iraqi border.
"Syria just needs to know we expect full cooperation and that we strongly urge them not to allow for Ba'ath Party members or Saddam's families or generals on the run to seek safe haven and find safe haven there," Mr. Bush told reporters at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda.
"We expect them to do everything they can to prevent people who should be held to account from escaping into their country," he added. "And if they are in their country, we expect the Syrian authorities to turn them over to the proper folks."
The president's strong words marked a continuing escalation of the administration's rhetoric against Syria, which has been accused of sending military equipment to Saddam's regime. On Thursday, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell urged Syria to "move in a different direction."
On Wednesday, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz said the Syrians "are behaving badly."
"They need to be reminded of that and if they continue, we need to think about what our policy is," Mr. Wolfowitz said.
"It's very dubious behavior, and by calling attention to it, we hope that in fact, it will be enough to have them stop," he told the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Like Iraq's former regime, Syria's government is also run by a hard-line Ba'athist dictatorship. The two countries had been longtime rivals, seeking hegemony in the Middle East. But recently, Syria has been a staunch opponent of the U.S.-led war against Iraq.
Also yesterday, Mr. Bush vowed to find any American prisoners of war who are still alive in Iraq and delegated to allied commander Gen. Tommy Franks the determination of when the conflict will be over.
In his first public remarks since the fall of Baghdad on Wednesday, the president expressed joy at the success of the war.
"We've had an historic week," he said. "I don't think I'll ever forget — I'm sure a lot of other people will never forget — the statue of Saddam Hussein falling in Baghdad and then seeing the jubilation on the faces of ordinary Iraqis as they realized that the grip of fear that had them by the throat had been released, the first signs of freedom."
The president promised not to give up on seven Americans who were taken prisoner by Saddam's forces in the early stages of the war.
"We will use every resource we have to find any POWs that are alive," Mr. Bush said. "And we pray that they are alive, because if they are, we'll find them."
Despite the dramatic success of coalition forces on the battlefield in recent days, Mr. Bush was careful not to declare victory yet. In fact, he left it up to Gen. Franks, the ground commander of the war, to make that determination.
"He's running this war," the president said. "I'm here in Washington, D.C. He's there in Qatar, and he's got commanders in Baghdad.
"He's better to judge whether we've achieved the objective than I have," he said. "The war will end when Tommy Franks says we've achieved our objective."
Mr. Bush declined to equate victory with the killing or capture of Saddam.
"I don't know the whereabouts of Saddam Hussein," he said. "I don't know if he's dead or alive. I do know he's no longer in power."
He emphasized that the purpose of the war "is to rid the Iraqi people of any vestiges of Saddam Hussein and his regime, so we cannot only free the people, but clear that country of weapons of mass destruction."
The president's spokesman, Ari Fleischer, suggested Saddam and his lieutenants had an escape plan in advance. "Either that, or they ran with their tails tucked and they just got out of there," he added.
Mr. Bush, whose war plan was widely denounced by Democrats and the press as insufficient in the opening days of the conflict, was asked yesterday whether he felt vindicated by the success of the war.
"I don't take anything personally," he said. "The wonderful thing about free speech and a lot of TV stations is you get a lot of opinions. Some of them are right and some of them were really wrong.
"But that's OK, that's what we believe," he added. "We believe in free speech, believe people ought to be able to express their opinion."
Mr. Fleischer was less forgiving when a reporter asked if looting in Iraq was indicative of a "country running amok." He recalled similar questions about how "things hadn't gone according to plan" shortly after the war began.
"This is almost starting to remind me of the stories [that U.S.] forces were bogged down," he said.
But the press secretary suggested negative coverage from journalists in the United States was mitigated by many positive reports from reporters embedded with U.S. forces.
"I think it's fair to say, when you look at the press coverage of this war, they've done a very enviable job in most instances, in some very difficult circumstances," he said.
"The decision to embed reporters has proved to be a very good decision," he added. "Good from the media's point of view, I believe. And good from the government's point of view. More importantly, good for the point of view of the American people, so they can get independent reporting from the field."
Although the White House has laid no claim on Iraq's vast oil reserves, Mr. Fleischer said the United States would dispatch a multinational team of experts to take control of the nation's oil fields.
"We have plans to bring in people to help from an international point of view to manage the fields," he said. "The faster we can get resources into the hands of the Iraqi people, the better the country will be."
Regarding the sale of Iraqi oil, Mr. Fleischer said it "doesn't require, necessarily, an international stamp to engage in commercial transactions legally."
"The United States provides products around the world that the United Nations doesn't have to say we can do." |
