Official: Syria allowing militants into Iraq

Miami Herald ^ | 9/16/03 | Frank Davies - Knight Ridder

[NormsRevenge]

WASHINGTON - A senior Bush administration official on Tuesday accused Syria of allowing Islamic militants to cross into Iraq to kill U.S. soldiers and said the Syrian government is pursuing a program to develop weapons of mass destruction.

Undersecretary of State John Bolton said the Bush administration is trying to resolve its differences with Syria through diplomacy. But he left open the possibility of tougher action.

"Our preference is to solve these problems by peaceful and diplomatic means, but the president has also been clear that we are not taking any options off the table," said Bolton, who oversees U.S. efforts to prevent the global spread of nuclear, chemical and biological arms.

"We have seen Syria take a series of hostile actions toward coalition forces in Iraq," Bolton told the Middle East subcommittee of the House International Affairs Committee. "Syria permitted volunteers to pass into Iraq to attack and kill our service members during the war and is still doing so."

Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., who chairs the subcommittee, is sponsoring a bill that has wide bipartisan support to use economic and diplomatic sanctions against Syria if it does not end its support for terrorist groups such as Hezbollah and continues to stockpile chemical weapons.

The administration has not taken a position on the legislation, but Secretary of State Colin Powell said Monday in Kuwait that Syria was not cooperating with U.S. requests and faced the threat of a sanctions bill if it did not change.

In the public portion of his testimony, Bolton said that Syria has stockpiles of the nerve agent sarin that could be delivered by aircraft or missiles, is trying to develop biological weapons and has received missile technology from North Korea. He later testified in a closed session.

But Bolton, known as a leading administration hawk, was muted in his overall assessment of the weapons threat, especially on Syria's nuclear ambitions.

He said some of Syria's reactor technology "could be applied to a nuclear weapons program," but reported no evidence so far on that front.

Syrian officials deny that they have weapons of mass destruction.

Bolton was prepared to testify in July that Syria's unconventional weapons constituted a serious threat to U.S. interests, but the CIA and other agencies objected vigorously that the assessment was exaggerated, several U.S. officials told Knight Ridder then.

Given that controversy, and the inability of U.S. forces to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, Rep. Gary Ackerman, D-N.Y., asked Bolton if intelligence officials supported his overall assessment of Syria.

"What I've said about Syria's weapons … is something that there's very broad and deep agreement on within the policy and intelligence communities," Bolton said.

With U.S. casualties rising in Iraq, the Bush administration is under pressure to stop foreign fighters from entering Iraq. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said last week that the largest number of fighters captured so far have been from Syria.

But the deputy ambassador of Syria, Imad Mustapha, who observed the hearing, denied that Syria was letting Islamic militants cross into Iraq to attack U.S. forces.

"We are doing what we can, but it's a long, porous desert border," Mustapha said. "The United States has a very large army in Iraq, the most powerful military in the world - and if they can't stop the infiltration, how can we stop them?"

[El Gato]

Our preference is to solve these problems by peaceful and diplomatic means,

With a Baa'thist regime?

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The Syrian version is, historically at least, worse than the Iraqi version.