Regards, Ivan
Posted on 04/15/2003 4:09:47 PM PDT by MadIvan
PRESIDENT ASSAD of Syria, under increasing pressure from Washington to end his country’s links with terrorism, will be powerless to do so, intelligence sources said.
He remains a prisoner of his own intelligence barons and the rest of the “old guard” in Damascus. These shadowy figures and the other power- brokers who owed allegiance to President Assad’s late father will dictate how Syria responds to US demands to sever all links with the terrorist group Hezbollah and to refuse sanctuary to members of Saddam Hussein’s deposed regime.
One intelligence source said: “President Assad has reforming instincts, but his hands are tied. The people of influence and power are all former cronies of the President’s father and they still have not emerged from the Syria of 20 years ago.”
Washington and London were astonished that Syria remained openly loyal to Saddam and covertly, with arms supplies and intelligence exchanges, even when it was obvious that the Americans were going to take over Baghdad. “The Syrians normally adopt a pragmatic stance, but this time they failed to see the big picture and now they are being punished by the Americans,” a diplomatic source said.
Already the Americans have bombed the Syrian Trade Centre in Baghdad, which was a symbol of the growing ties between the two countries in recent years. They also shut down the Kirkuk-to-Banyas pipeline, which had been pumping 200,000 gallons of oil a day to Syria, in breach of United Nations sanctions.
With a large American military force likely to remain in Iraq for several months, the Bush Administration is seizing the moment to apply maximum psychological pressure on Damascus to sever its links with the Lebanon-based Hezbollah, which threatens Israel’s northern border.
However, the power barons are too heavily involved with supporting Hezbollah. “The old guard is still obsessed with Israel and nothing is going to change, whatever the Americans threaten to do,” the diplomatic source said.
In the mind of the US Administration, terrorism and weapons of mass destruction are now inextricably linked and there remain strong suspicions that Saddam may have secretly sent some of Iraq’s chemical weapons to Syria.
Yesterday Alexander Vershbow, US Ambassador to Moscow and a veteran foreign and security affairs expert, confirmed in an interview with a Russian daily newspaper: “We do not exclude the possibility that some of the chemical weapons were transferred by Iraq to Syria even before the start of the war.”
According to some intelligence reports, Iraq is suspected of reaching a deal with senior members of Syrian military Intelligence to hide sensitive weaponry and technology in Syria. The director of Syrian military Intelligence is General Hassan Khalil and his powerful deputy is General Assef Shawkat, who is the husband of President Assad’s older sister, Bushra.
There is further suspicion that, as part of the deal, Iraq agreed to supply several dozen al-Samoud surface-to-surface missiles to Hezbollah.
Iraq began to destroy stocks of these missiles before the war, when United Nations weapons inspectors ruled that they had a range beyond the permitted 93 miles. Although there is no firm evidence that the deal went through, convoys of Iraqi lorries were seen crossing the Syrian border at al-Tanf in the last week of October and the first week of November.
Some of these vehicles were also seen passing through the Syrian-Lebanese border checkpoint at Masna in the Bekaa Valley.
It is also known that in February, as America was building up its forces to attack Iraq, Taher Jalil Habush, the head of Iraqi general Intelligence, met General Shawkat, after which co-operation between the two services was noticeably upgraded.
Regards, Ivan
Doesn't have the jovial disposition under fire that Saddam has/had.
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