Damascus in US crosshairs over missing scientists, WMDs
Apr. 13, 2003 Jerusalem Post
Syria has denied hiding top Iraqi scientists and biochemical weapons, though at least one official of Saddam Hussein's regime arrived in Damascus on Saturday. Iraq's UN ambassador, Muhammad al-Douri, flew in from Paris a day after leaving New York.
A former international law professor at Baghdad University, Douri became a diplomat in 1999. Al-Douri, who claimed he had "no relationship with Saddam" and hoped to go back to teaching in Iraq, is not exactly the type of Baathist coalition forces are hunting.
The Americans are far more interested in two top scientists who weaponized anthrax Huda Salih Mahdi Ammash ("Mrs. Anthrax") and Rihab Taha ("Dr. Germ") both said to have escaped to Syria.
And the biochemical weapons they were said to have produced have proven to be just as elusive. Before the war, US officials said Iraq could produce up to 500 tons of nerve agents and mustard gas, as well as 25,000 liters of anthrax. Iraq was supposedly on the threshold of building unconventional weapons.
So far, allied discoveries have been disappointing. For instance, the 14 barrels supposedly of sarin and tabun nerve agents found at the Hindiyah chemical weapons site are now thought to be pesticide, while several tons of low-grade uranium stored at Tuwaitha had been previously cleared by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Lt.-Gen. Amir al-Saadi, Iraq's chief top science adviser who surrendered to American armed forces on Saturday in Baghdad, insisted that the regime does not have any weapons of mass destruction (WMDs).
The Americans, though, remain suspicious.
Last week, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said the US has "high confidence that they [the Iraqis] have weapons of mass destruction..."
Syria now finds itself in the administration's crosshairs. Richard Perle, a former Pentagon adviser behind the war against Saddam, warned Syria that it would become a possible military target if it were found to be harboring Iraqi WMDs.
At a Saturday press conference in Damascus, Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk Shara insisted that American accusations both on the fugitive scientists and the undiscovered WMDs were an attempt to divert attention from America's "failures" in Iraq.
He then went on to compare the United States attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq to the rampage of Hitler's Germany in Europe.
"They've left a mess in both these countries and they're not finished. Now they're turning their attention to a third country," he said.
"Historians talk about the Second World War and how the Germans should have been stopped earlier."
Still, it is not farfetched to assume that Damascus might have colluded with Baghdad. During the first Gulf War, in 1990, Syria supported the coalition assault on Iraqi occupation forces in Kuwait, but when president Hafez Assad died in June 2000, his son and successor Bashar adopted a more cooperative relationship with Saddam's regime.
By January 2002, Britain started accusing Syria of importing over 100,000 barrels of oil a day from Iraq in violation of UN sanctions. During the same period, Iraqi defectors told of a Syrian shipment of military equipment, including anti-aircraft missiles, rockets, and Scud missile guidance systems, to Baghdad.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld warned Syria, in late March, to stop selling night-vision goggles to the Iraqis. A few days later, Syria helped hundreds of Arab volunteers make their way to Iraq to fight US and British troops there.
Doron Peskin, research head for Infoprod Research, a business consultant firm based in Tel Aviv, contended that Syria, looking to avoid a row with the US, has actually been trying to seal its borders.
"There's been mention in the Arab press that Syrians prevented Abu Abbas [who heads the Palestine Liberation Front responsible for the 1985 murder of American Jew Leon Klinghoffer on the cruise ship Achille Lauro] from entering their country," said Peskin.
He also noted that Syrians helped the Americans break al-Qaida cells after September 11.
"It's been the trademark of Syrian policy under the father to pursue contradictory policies at the same time so as not to close the door on any option," said Itamar Rabinovich, the Tel Aviv University president who is also a former Israeli ambassador to the US and chief negotiator with Syria under prime minister Yitzhak Rabin.
However, in his attempt to shore up his popularity among radical elements, Bashar showed a lack of his father's "political dexterity," Rabinovitch said.
"By now, Bashar has used up any goodwill he once had in Washington," said Rabinovich. "It's just a hunch, but Syria may soon face heavy diplomatic pressure with the threat of limited military strikes from Washington."
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