Posted on 02/12/2004 4:30:48 PM PST by areafiftyone
The US plans to impose sanctions on Syria in accordance with the Syria Accountability Act, US Secretary of State Colin Powell told a Senate panel on Thursday. During the hearing, Powell also placed the burden for moving peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians on the Palestinians.
Asked whether the US intends to begin implementation of the Syria Accountability Act sometime in the near future, Powell told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, "Yes. We're examining now what sections of the act we want to use."
That the administration has been reviewing which sanctions might be imposed within the next few months has been known in Washington.
But it was the first time a senior US official stated publicly that sanctions would definitely be imposed.
The president has the ability to waive sanctions if he deems it in US national security interests.
The act, signed in December by President George W. Bush, directs the president to ban US sales of weaponry and dual-use items – items that could be used for civilian or military purpose – unless Syria abandons its support for terrorism, removes its troops from Lebanon, stops the flow of terrorists into Iraq, and abandons its pursuit of nonconventional weapons.
It also calls on the president to impose two or more sanctions from a list of six: an export ban; ban on US businesses operating in Syria; restrictions on Syrian diplomats in the US; exclusion of Syrian-owned aircraft from US airspace; a reduction of diplomatic contacts with Syria; or freezing of Syrian assets in the US.
Powell said during the hearing that Syria had not yet closed the offices of Palestinian terrorist groups or expelled Palestinian terrorist leaders from Damascus as the US has demanded.
He also said he could not confirm or deny whether a Syrian plane had brought back weapons for Hizbullah from Iran after an earthquake-relief mission there.
On the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, Powell said that this week, through European intermediaries, he urged the Palestinian Authority leadership to "come forward with a security plan to start taking action against terrorists in a very significant and decisive way." He urged Israel not to enact a disengagement plan that would preclude long-term stability in the region.
"The Israelis are now making some unilateral moves. We don't want to see a solution that is so unilateral that it doesn't really provide the kind of stability that we're looking for. But the Palestinians must move, and we've made it clear to them," Powell said.
Powell said the US was "very closely" following Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's proposal to evacuate Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip.
"And we've said to the Israelis, that's interesting, we want the settlements closed, we want to know exactly how... that's going to be done and where will those settlers go, and how does it affect settlement activity in the West Bank," Powell added.
In a radio interview Wednesday, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage said "the majority of the blame has to be on the Palestinians who have not completely and totally eschewed terrorism as an instrument of policy." Armitage called Israel's pronouncement that settlers would be evacuated from Gaza "a step in the right direction."
In his testimony, Powell also said the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is inspiring anti-American sentiment in the Middle East and affecting US reconstruction efforts in Iraq.
"We fully understand that this conflict between the Palestinians and the Israelis is the source of a great deal of the anti-American feelings that exist in that part of the world, and does affect what we're doing in Iraq, and that part of the world," he said.
Powell was attempting to reassure senators that resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a "matter of the utmost urgency" for the United States, even though he skipped over the issue in his opening remarks outlining foreign priorities for the coming year, and the president ignored the conflict totally in his State of the Union speech in January.
US envoys from the State Department and the White House National Security Council are due to travel to Israel next week.
Sounds like we know where the WMD are at.....
However it works out, Syria needs a good hard squeeze to the nads.
We've had the right solution to Syria's Islamic terrorist savagry problem in our arsenal since 1945.
Whoa! When did Abu Powell start having lucid moments like this?!
Just for fun here, what do you consider to be the "occupied lands" in question? Judea, Samaria and Gaza? All of Israel? Something else?
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