Regards, Ivan
Posted on 05/03/2003 6:14:02 PM PDT by MadIvan
Damian McElroy in Damascus reports that Colin Powell's demands that extremists be driven out of the Syrian capital are being ignored
Backgammon games at the doorway and a steady stream of fresh, sweet coffee from the scullery kept the Damascus office of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine busy yesterday, even as the US secretary of State, Colin Powell, claimed that Syria has begun forcing groups the Bush administration considers terrorist organizations to close down.
If Mr Powell's visit to Damascus was designed to bring the pressure of a victorious world power to bear on the capital, and the Palestinians who use it as their base, it did not seem to have worked on Khalid Mashal, the Damascus representative of the Popular Front.
In an upmarket suburb, 15 minutes' drive from the palace where Mr Powell met Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president, Mr Khalid denied that offices such as his were instrumental in recruiting and planning major terrorist campaigns. "We are an information office," he said. "We represent Palestinian refugees here in Syria. The Syrian government does not want to get rid of us."
He denied involvement in the sort of suicide bombing operations carried out by two British citizens in Tel Aviv last week. "All the operations we see are carried out by our branches inside Palestine," he said. "They don't even tell us what they are planning to do."
Mr Powell's words fell on similarly stony ground in the squalid slums of Jarmouk Camp, on the outskirts of Damascus, where Hamas operates from a sprawling compound. One of the militants armed with assault rifles guarding the Hamas headquarters confirmed: "We are working as normal."
The American government believes that Syria is a key staging post for the world's most violent terrorist groups. Before he flew out of Damascus yesterday, Mr Powell demanded that the Syrians shut down the Popular Front, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hizbollah. "We raised serious issues in a very direct manner," an official in Mr Powell's entourage said. "Whether relations improve or deteriorate at this point really depends on their performance. What matters is what they do. That's what we will be following."
According to an official in Damascus, however, the Syrian government did not budge, complaining that the Americans had refused to put pressure on Israel to withdraw from Palestinian territory. "We cannot do that," she said. "What will we get out of it? How can we explain it to the people on the street? They do not want us to expel these groups for nothing. This is our card. We cannot play it for nothing."
Mr Al-Assad, the British-educated Syrian president, has promised to reform his country, a socialist dictatorship, on Western lines. The regime's actions, however, point to continuing support for radical fundamentalists. During the Iraq war, Syria opened its borders to jihadi volunteers going to Baghdad to defend Saddam Hussein; sent sensitive military hardware to the Iraqi army and allegedly allowed key members of the regime to evade capture.
Nabil Jabri, a former Ba'athist official turned "opposition" activist, said that Damascus could, if it chose, use its strong position in Lebanon and close relationship with Palestinian groups to stop the cycle of violence in the Middle East. "Syria can speak with these people, give them advice from a friend, put pressure on them to stop," he said. "It will not because it has nothing to gain from it."
Mr Khalid, of the Popular Front, claimed that the Americans had no right to demand the closure of the Palestinian offices. "Our targets are in Palestine, not in Syria, or in Lebanon, or anywhere else in the world," he said. "If Israel does not accept our rights to live in Palestine there can be no settlement. If they do, we can live in two states side by side, and I will go back to Palestine tomorrow to live in peace."
Regards, Ivan
These extremists control Syria and they have no other place to go. So they ignore Powells demands.
How predictable -- I wonder what's next.
What they get is to keep control of their own country. They've played this card too many times now, and we're no longer going to allow the suicide kings to be wild.
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