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Wednesday, May 13th, 2009
Moallem Discusses with Feltman and Shapiro
Ire over US Sanctions Causes Policy Review in Damascus
The Syrians are upset with the way sanctions were reimposed by President Obama. The current administration’s use of language identical to that used by President Bush, without any phrases to soften the hostility and without referring to dialogue, progress, or anticipated improvements angered Syrian policy makers. Many are becoming ever more convinced that the Obama administration cannot bring about real change and is falling back on the use of sticks and the intimidation techniques that President Bush favored. Officials have suggested that Damascus is reviewing its policies and does not know where the US-Syrian dialogue goes from here. No one whats to talk about the promised Mitchell visit as yet. They are still trying to digest the implications of the Feltman-Shapiro visit last week.
The scheduled agenda for Feltman’s and Shapiro’s visit in Damascus last week was to implement a wide ranging agreement on intelligence sharing and security cooperation in Iraq, which included joint patrols and other arrangements that could finally end border disputes and put an additional dent in infiltration across the long Syrian-Iraqi border. Today, no communications exist between officials on the two sides of the Iraqi-Syrian border, which often leads to security breaches, misunderstandings, and recriminations from both sides that the other is at fault for placing politics above security, ideology above the lives of common people, and posturing above peace.
On Lebanon, the Americans expressed unsolicited gratification that the election preparations and campaigning was proceeding in an atmosphere of freedom and security.
On the Golan and possible Peace talks with Israel, it is too early to say what will happen. Netanyahu has only reiterated his refusal to give up the Golan.
A Syrian who has good contacts with the government in Damascus wrote me the following about the way Obama renewed sanctions:
Really inexplicable. Obama had the chance to protect his troops in Iraq without further delay, and to really change the dynamic of US-Syria relations by immediately sending an ambassador to Damascus and starting intelligence sharing. I do not know whose idea it was to test Damascus and to throw a spanner in the works. Soon negotiations will lose momentum and relations will fall back into the quagmire of the Bush Syria-policy. I am not sure how US interests are served by this continuing dance of recriminations and insults which do nothing but perpetuate mistrust and ill-will.
Another said:
“How dare they send Feltman and Shapiro to announce that they are renewing sanctions and then explain that we should think nothing of it — that it is routine — and expect that we will just turn the page and get on with implementing the broad security and intelligence sharing plan that was to be the substance of our meetings.
Another Syrian official explained:
“Yes, we expected the sanctions to be renewed, but why use the identical language that Bush used? Why not say something to reflect the progress made in out discussions and our mutual intentions of changing our relationship? Obama could have said something like: “We renew sanctions but hope that by the end of a year we will be able to revise our relations and will have made considerable progress on a number of differences we have with Syria.”
An American-Syrian explained:
“Syria is not changing. They think that they can give zero to the Americans. What has Syria really done for America? Nothing. Syrian officials believe that America needs Syria and has been wrong to treat it so badly these last eight years that they should renounce sanctions and change their ways for free. The world does not work like that. This is a golden opportunity for Syria. It is slipping from Syria’s hands because of pride and obtuseness.
The following article in Syria-News quote Turkey’s Foreign Minister saying that Syria is genuinely interested in peace negotiations with Israel and should be given the benefit of the doubt.
Gul
غول:سورية أكثر صدقية من إسرائيل ونيتها حقيقة في الانفتاح على الغرب
الاخبار السياسية
وينقل إلى سورية تطمينات أمريكية حول علاقاتهما
وصف الرئيس التركي عبد الله غول سورية بأنها “كانت أكثر صدقية من إسرائيل خلال المفاوضات غير المباشرة”, مشيرا إلى أن “الرئيس الأسد لديه النية الحقيقية والقوية في الانفتاح على الغرب”.
وأضاف غول في مقابلة مع صحيفة الحياة أن “سورية وإسرائيل كانتا على وشك الانتقال إلى مفاوضات مباشرة بينهما، لكن حرب غزة أدت إلى إحباط المفاوضات غير المباشرة التي كانت ناجحة”.
وكانت سورية وإسرائيل وصلتا إلى المرحلة الرابعة من مباحثات السلام غير المباشرة بوساطة تركيا قبل أن تعلقها سورية إثر العدوان الإسرائيلي على غزة أواخر العام الماضي.
وحول العلاقات السورية الأمريكية قال الرئيس التركي إن “ملف سورية كان من بين أهم الملفات التي ناقشها مع الرئيس الأميركي باراك أوباما خلال زيارته إلى أنقرة، وأنه يحمل إلى دمشق التي سيزورها بعد يومين تطمينات”.
ومن المقرر أن يصل الرئيس التركي إلى سورية الجمعة المقبل للتباحث مع كبار المسؤولين السوريين في العديد من القضايا ذات الاهتمام المشترك.
وتأتي زيارة غول بعد أكثر من شهر على توقيع اتفاقية للتعاون الفني العسكري في مجالات الصناعات الدفاعية وتبادل المعلومات الفنية والعلمية بين سورية وتركيا, و قيام قوات برية سورية وتركية وعلى مدى ثلاثة أيام، بتدريبات عسكرية مشتركة عبر الحدود الدولية بين البلدين.
“US President Barack Obama’s two envoys returned from Damascus last weekend with the impression that Syria is still not ready to withdraw its support for terror,” Maya Bengal wrote in Ma’ariv today:
Syria criticizes renewal of US sanctions
By ALBERT AJI
DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — Syria rejected the Obama administration’s decision to renew economic and diplomatic sanctions against Damascus and urged Washington to abandon “foolish policies,” a state-run newspaper reported Sunday….
Syria’s Tishrin newspaper said U.S. policies of isolation, blockades and sanctions adopted by the former U.S. administration “have put the United States in an intractable impasse.” It said Washington can reverse this path if it stepped up its role in promoting peace, security and stability in the Middle East.
The United States should get rid of “foolish policies and replace them with openness, dialogue and discussions through transparent practices, the foremost of which is an open and final reversal of the policy of sanctions against states and peoples,” the newspaper said in a front-page editorial.
Syria Must Take ‘Immediate’ Action on Iraq Fighters, U.S. Says
2009-05-11
By Viola Gienger
May 11 (Bloomberg) — The U.S. called on Syria to take “immediate and decisive action” to stop the transit of foreign fighters into neighboring Iraq, where a spate of bombings made April the deadliest month since September.
Acting Assistant Secretary of State Jeffrey Feltman and White House adviser Dan Shapiro raised the issue with Syrian officials during their meetings in Damascus last week, State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said today.
“We continue to have very deep concern about this issue of the flow of foreign fighters going into Iraq via Syria,” Kelly told reporters in Washington. Syria should improve screening at the Damascus airport and increase security on the border with Iraq and cooperation with Iraqi officials, he said….
The death toll was 40 percent higher than in March, AFP said last week. Still, data compiled by Washington’s Brookings Institution from U.S. Defense Department reports show the level of violence remains well below that of two years ago.
Syria denies country is route for al-Qaida
2009-05-13
DAMASCUS, Syria, May 13 (UPI) — Syrian officials are denying a news report that al-Qaida has resumed sneaking fighters into Iraq through Syria. Officials said the published report in a U.S. newspaper that the smuggling resumed was false and indicated U.S. confusion about security matters in Iraq, the Kuwaiti news agency KUNA reported Wednesday.
Terrorist Traffic Via Syria Again Inching Up
By Karen DeYoung
Last October, as the Bush administration was touting a dramatic drop in the number of suicide bombings in Iraq, four young Tunisian men left their homes for Libya and then headed to Syria. There, they were met at the Damascus airport and taken to a safe house. Six tedious months passed until their handlers felt that it was safe to move the men again. In April, they were smuggled across the Iraqi border; within days, two were dead, among the suicide bombers who have killed at least 370 Iraqis in a wave of attacks over the past several weeks.
The third Tunisian disappeared. The fourth was captured and, according to a senior U.S. military official, provided interrogators with this account of their travels.
His statement, combined with what other sources had previously indicated to U.S. and Iraqi intelligence, confirmed what American officials had suspected: After a long hiatus, the Syrian pipeline operated by the organization al-Qaeda in Iraq is back in business.
The revival of a transit route that officials had declared all but closed comes as the Obama administration is exploring a new diplomatic dialogue with Syria. At the same time, Washington remains concerned by Syrian activities — including ongoing support for the militant groups Hezbollah and Hamas, as well as activities involving Iraq.
On Wednesday, acting Assistant Secretary of State Jeffrey D. Feltman and National Security Council official Daniel Shapiro arrived in Syria for their second visit since Barack Obama’s inauguration as president. Two days later, however, Obama renewed U.S. sanctions against Syria, accusing Damascus of supporting terrorism in the Middle East and undermining Iraqi stability.
“I think it sends the message that we have some very serious concerns,” Robert Wood, a State Department spokesman, said of the sanctions renewal. Feltman, he added, was “in Damascus to talk about . . . how we can get Syria to change its behavior and see if it’s willing to really engage seriously in a dialogue, be a positive role in the Middle East. Up until now, Syria hasn’t played that positive role.”
Saudi Arabia Must Come Off the Sidelines in Iraq
Michael Wahid Hanna 12 May 2009
World Politics Review
At a recent forum on U.S.-Saudi relations in Washington, D.C., current and former Saudi officials decried the previous U.S. administration’s Middle East policies. …On his recent trip to the region, U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates reiterated his appeal to Riyadh and Cairo to appoint ambassadors to Baghdad….
The Saudi-Iraqi border represents yet another opportunity for mutually beneficial cooperation. The border has been a main entryway for takfiri extremists into Iraq, and Saudis represent (.pdf) a high proportion of those foreign fighters. While infiltration has decreased with the improvements in security, increased coordination and joint planning would improve the effectiveness of border patrols and further stem the flow. That, in turn, would help to blunt the dangers posed to Saudi Arabia and the broader Arab world by the return of seasoned and radicalized fighters…
“The critical juncture will be what comes out of the Obama-Netanyahu meeting,” Abdullah said.
“If there is procrastination by Israel on the two-state solution or there is no clear American vision for how this is going to play out in 2009, then all the tremendous credibility that Obama has worldwide and in this region will evaporate overnight if nothing comes out in May. Reuters
An assured Assad in Financial Times, May 10 2009
By Roula Khalaf and Anna Fifield
“The Syrians now believe they are the centre of the Middle East,” quips Andrew Tabler…
US officials fear that Syria might be overestimating the change of tone of the Obama administration and misreading its intentions. To stress that point, a day after a senior US envoy was in Damascus at the end of last week, the administration renewed its unilateral sanctions against Syria, citing the regime’s support for terrorism and weapons trade.“We want to see a change in Syria’s outlook, away from being a spoiler and more towards being a constructive problem solver, at least willing to deal with some of the problems in the region,” says one US official. “It is not that we want them to cut off relations with Iran but to recognise that the west can offer things that Iran can’t – like economic prosperity and peace with Israel.”
Under centrist Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Israel had been in Turkish-mediated peace talks with Syria until they were broken off during the Israel Defence Force’s brutal three-week incursion into the Gaza Strip.
“They had spent a lot of energy doing the Olmert thing in Turkey,” Landis said. “No one believed anything would happen under Olmert, but the idea was you get momentum and create things. [Now] the Syrians feel like they’re being played and they’re getting asked to do a strip tease, and they’re not going to get anything but knowing glances from Israel.”
Indeed, the young right-wing government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave even less than a “knowing glance” over the weekend.
“Remaining on the Golan will ensure Israel has a strategic advantage in cases of military conflict with Syria,” Netanyahu told reporters on Thursday. He reaffirmed that he didn’t intend to withdraw from the strategic plateau during a cabinet meeting Sunday.
With the Golan Heights off the table, resumption of meaningful talks is unlikely.
Thaw with Syria Hits Stumbling Blocks
By Ali Gharib
WASHINGTON, May 11 (IPS) - U.S. President Barack Obama issued a statement on May 8 calling for the renewal of sanctions on Syria, which were set to expire on Monday. The declaration came at the end of a busy week in which both high-level U.S. officials and the Iranian president visited the Syrian capital, Damascus.
Though Syria has recently sought engagement with the U.S. and Israel, the executive order extending sanctions is only the latest in a series of significant stumbling blocks to peeling off one of Iran’s closest regional allies.
The renewed sanctions came on the heels of two-high profile visits to Damascus - first by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and then U.S. diplomat Jeffrey Feltman and Daniel Shapiro of Obama’s National Security Council - which exemplified the West’s sometimes-faltering efforts to pull Syria away from Iran’s influence.
Obama cited Syria’s support for terror, its weapons programmes, and its “undermining” of U.S. goals in Iraq - collectively “the unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy” of the U.S. - as reasons to extend the George W. Bush-era sanctions for one year.
Two weeks earlier, Representatives Mark Kirk of Illinois and Eliot Engel of New York wrote a letter to the White House urging Obama to “act quickly” and renew the sanctions.
According to the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, which compiles statistics, Kirk received the most campaign donations from pro-Israel political action committees of any House member, 62,000 dollars in total, in the 2007/2008 cycle. Engel was the second largest Democratic recipient in the House in that period, with 36,500 dollars.
But the extension of sanctions does not mean that the possibility of U.S. engagement with Syria is disappearing. Indeed, there were indications that Obama’s Mideast envoy, George Mitchell, would be visiting Syria next month.
Rather, the sanctions appear to be a reinforcement of the status quo.
“This is the clearest sign that negotiations between Damascus and Washington are going, if not badly, at least slowly, despite statements by both sides that progress is being made,” wrote Oklahoma University professor Joshua Landis on his blog, Syria Comment.
“It tells us that despite the rhetoric about a ‘new U.S. relationship’ to Middle Eastern countries, Washington still believes that it must keep its foot on Syria’s economic throat in order to win concessions.”
Mending ties will take time
By Sami Moubayed, Special to Gulf News
Published: May 11, 2009, 23:14
The big news is that US President Barack Obama has renewed sanctions on Syria, imposed by his predecessor, George W. Bush, in 2004. The order, numbered 13,338, was due to expire on May 10.
The renewal came after Acting Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, Jeffrey Feltman and National Security Council official Daniel Shapiro visited Syria, followed immediately by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Foreign Minister Walid Al Mua’allem met with the official US envoys, who were making their second trip to Syria since Obama came to office last January, and said that the talks had been “constructive.”
During a meeting with his Iranian counterpart, President Bashar Al Assad defended Syria’s alliance with Tehran as “strategic”, saying that the common vision shared since 2005 was “correct.” Syria had no intention of abandoning its allies, or changing its policies vis-à-vis the resistance in Lebanon or Palestine, the Syrian president said.
US-based Syria expert Joshua Landis said at the time, “This is the clearest sign that negotiations between Damascus and Washington are going, if not badly, at least slowly despite statements by both sides that progress is being made.”
Others also analysed Feltman’s visit and the renewal of sanctions and said these developments served the interests of the anti-Syrian March 14 Coalition in Lebanon. Some pointed to a visit by Israeli officials to Washington, where they had extensive talks with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, while sanctions were being renewed on Damascus.
Let’s not get carried away here purely for the sake of creating media excitement. Renewal of sanctions is a routine process that was expected, and does not affect the Syrian-US commitment to continue searching for common ground in the Middle East.
Terrorist Traffic Via Syria Again Inching Up
Pipeline to Iraq Back In Business After Lull
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