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Politics : Foreign Policy Discussion Thread -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bris who wrote (6531)	1/9/2004 7:19:57 AM
From: lorne	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 15987

Ron. Be great if Assad decided to also turn over and WMD he may have received from sadam..... Syria Will Return $200 Mln to Iraq, Assad Says (Update1) Jan. 8 (Bloomberg) -- Syria plans to return $200 million to Iraq that former leader Saddam Hussein stashed in Syrian banks, President Bashar al-Assad said in an interview during a visit to Turkey. quote.bloomberg.com ``It's being worked out,'' the Syrian leader told Bloomberg News in Istanbul, where he's meeting with businessmen as part of an effort to boost investor confidence in Syria and open a Damascus stock exchange. ``It's a technical issue, not political.'' Iraq's interim government and its U.S.-led occupiers are trying to come up with as much Iraqi cash as possible to run the country because oil revenue isn't covering all the expenses. Assad's pledge to return the money to Iraq comes as he tries to attract foreign investors and is giving some help to the U.S.'s war on terror. U.S. authorities have identified more than $1 billion of Iraqi cash in banks in Syria, Lebanon and Jordan after examining records recovered from the Central Bank of Iraq, the Washington Post reported last month citing Treasury, Customs and Internal Revenue Service officials. Assad confirmed in the interview that the accounts exist. ``It's about $200 million,'' he said at the Ciragan Palace Hotel, where he is staying. He declined to comment on how long it would take to return the money or what the technical issues are that need to be worked out. His entourage for this first official Syrian visit to its neighbor in almost six decades includes the Syrian tourism and foreign ministers as well as Assad's wife, Asma al-Assad, who worked as an analyst at J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. and Deutsche Bank AG before becoming Syria's first lady. The visit marks a warming in relations between the countries, which almost went to war five years ago over Syria's sheltering of wanted Kurdish separatist leader Abdullah Ocalan. Syria also has sparred with Turkey over control of water from the Euphrates River, whose headwaters arise on Turkish soil. While Syria has given the U.S. some assistance in tracking terrorists, the State Department considers Syria a state sponsor of terror for supporting militant groups such as Hezbollah and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Last month the U.S. tightened its sanctions against Syria by banning the export to the country of products with potential military applications. Assad, acting as a salesman for his country, is trying to bring more business to Syria, in part by wooing Turkey, a U.S. ally that cooperates with Israel's military. As part of his effort to open Syria's economy to foreign investment, Assad visited the Istanbul Stock Exchange today. Assad, who took power in July 2000 after the death of his father, Hafez al-Assad, announced plans in December 2000 to remove currency controls and set up a stock exchange. In April 2001, he signed a law allowing private investors to set up commercial banks and another guaranteeing bank secrecy. Assad's Baath Party nationalized Syria's banks in 1963 after it took power. After visiting the stock exchange, Assad held a private meeting with about 85 Turkish businessmen in which he invited them to do business with Syria. ``It's a virgin country, economically,'' Assad told them.