Syria:  Bush Says Syria Will Cooperate

After issuing stern warnings to Syria in recent weeks, U.S. President George W. Bush said yesterday that he believes Damascus is cooperating with Washington’s efforts in the Middle East (see GSN, April 18).

“I’m confident the Syrian government has heard us,” Bush said.  “And I believe it when they say they want to cooperate with us,” he added.

Although Bush was referring directly to the issue of Syria harboring members of the deposed Iraqi regime, it appears he was also making reference to U.S. allegations of chemical weapons development, according to the New York Times.

“It seems like they’re beginning to get the message,” Bush said (Richard Stevenson, New York Times, April 21).

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Syria:  Powell Intends to Visit Damascus

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell announced yesterday he expects to travel to Syria for a “very vigorous diplomatic exchange.”  His comments followed days of building U.S. pressure on Damascus (see GSN, April 16).

U.S. President George W. Bush and other senior officials have accused Syria of hiding Iraqi officials and chemical weapons and have said that Syrian officials must “cooperate” with Washington (see GSN, April 14).

U.S. State Department officials were apparently surprised by Powell’s reference to a Syrian visit, the Washington Post reported.  No firm plans have been made for such a trip, according to officials.

Damascus would welcome a Powell visit, according to Syrian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Buthaina Shaaban.

Diplomatic talks are “much quieter and much more constructive” than trading barbs in news reports, Shaaban said (Dobbs/Wax, Washington Post, April 17).

U.S. intelligence officials, both current and former, said that Syria developed chemical weapons to counter Israel’s nuclear weapons, the Post reported.

“They have been developing chemical weapons as a force equalizer with the Israelis,” a former senior intelligence analyst said yesterday.  Former Syrian president Hafez Assad, “the present president’s father, saw chemicals as a way to threaten the Israelis and an equalizer for their nuclear program,” the former analyst added.

The elder Assad knew that “military aid from the Soviets would never be able to match what Israel developed in the nuclear field and received from the U.S.,” according to the analyst.

Damascus has denied that it has any such weapons, but the CIA has said for the last two years that Syria has “a stockpile of the nerve agent sarin, but apparently is trying to develop more toxic and persistent nerve agents,” the Post reported.

Almost every country in the Middle East has attempted to develop weapons of mass destruction to counter Israel, according to Joseph Cirincione, head of the Nonproliferation Project of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

“You can’t get rid of chemical or biological or nuclear programs in Arab countries unless you also address the elimination of Israel’s nuclear and chemical programs,” Cirincione said yesterday (Walter Pincus, Washington Post, April 17).

Syria, meanwhile, asked the U.N. Security Council to approve a resolution calling for every country in the Middle East to sign and ratify the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the Chemical Weapons Convention and the Biological Weapons Convention.

“We believe such a draft resolution … is a very important factor for the peace process and settling the peace and security in the Middle East,” Syrian U.N. Ambassador Mikhail Wehbe said.

Security Council experts will attempt to put together a text for the draft resolution today, according to Mexican U.N. Ambassador Adolfo Aguilar Zinser.  If they cannot agree on a text for the resolution it will return to the council for further deliberation, he added.

U.S. officials said they support the idea of a WMD-free Middle East but believe the focus should not be so broad.

“We favor as a goal the removal of all weapons of mass destruction from the entire Middle East region,” said U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte.  “We think the focus at the moment is the search for WMD in Iraq … Secondly we’re concerned about Syria’s own WMD,” he added (Edith Lederer, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, April 16).

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Japan:  Officials to Investigate Discarded World War II-Era Weapons

The Japanese Environment Ministry is planning to investigate the current status of discarded World War II-era chemical weapons, Xinhua News Service reported today (see GSN, April 16). 

The investigation, which could begin early next month, will re-examine postwar measures used to dispose of such weapons and the risk they now pose to public health.  The investigation could include sites not listed in a 1973 study Japan conducted on former chemical weapons storage sites, Xinhua reported (Xinhua News Service, April 17).

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Syria:  Powell Maintains Pressure on Damascus

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell yesterday said the United States has concerns about Syria, and Iran too, but is not planning to attack them (see GSN, April 15).

“We are concerned about Syria’s development of [chemical] weapons.  We are concerned about Syria’s continuing support of terrorist organizations.  And in recent weeks, we have been concerned about the flow of material across the Syrian border into Iraq as well as the flow of individuals back and forth across the Syrian-Iraq border,” Powell said.  “We hope that Syria understands now that there is a new environment in the region with the end of the regime of Saddam Hussein and that Syria will reconsider its policies of past years and understand that there are better choices it can make than the choices it has made in the past,” he added.

The United States also has concerns “about some of the policies of Iran,” according to Powell.

“But there is no list, there is no war plan right now to go attack someone else, either for the purpose of overthrowing their leadership or for the purpose of imposing democratic values,” he said (Federal News Service transcript, April 15).

Iran, meanwhile, said it would support Syria against the United States, but did not promise military assistance.

“Syria is on the front line against Zionist pressures, defending the cause of the Palestinian nation, freedom and peace in the region.  We will defend Syria but it doesn’t mean we will engage in military confrontation,” said Iranian President Mohammad Khatami (Ali Akbar Dareini, Associated Press/Yahoo.com, April 16).

One U.S. intelligence official said yesterday that senior Iraqi intelligence operative Farouk Hijazi fled to Syria, most likely “in the last 24 hours.”

The official said the United States has intelligence on other Iraqi officials hiding in Syria, but “nobody whose last name is Hussein.”

Syria has a history of providing refuge to extremists and developing weapons of mass destruction, according to former State Department official Henri Barkey, now a professor of international relations at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania.

“Damascus wasn’t as bad as Baghdad.  But by process of elimination, Syria now ranks as the worst Arab country in terms of its ambitions to develop weapons of mass destruction, support for terrorism and human rights abuses,” Barkey said (Robin Wright, Los Angeles Times, April 16).

The United States recently shut down an oil pipeline from Iraq to Syria, ending the flow that had begun in 2000 in violation of U.N. sanctions, according to the New York Post (Orin/Geller, New York Post, April 16).

Syria had imported 200,000 barrels a day from Iraq at below-market prices while selling its own supplies a full-market rates.  Syria announced last week that its oil exports for 2003 would drop 40 percent, according to the Financial Times (Kim Ghattas, Financial Times, April 16).

Damascus, meanwhile, said it was willing to agree to a WMD-free Middle East.

“The Syrian government is ready to sign a treaty under U.N. supervision to make the whole Middle East a zone free from all mass destruction weapons, nuclear, chemical and biological,” Syrian Foreign Minister Farouq al-Shara told Australian public television station SBS (Reuters, April 16).

Syria announced it plans to submit a U.N. resolution to formalize its proposal.

“If the United States and others are worried about mass destruction weapons, chemical, nuclear or biological passing into the hands of terrorists we would like this to be materialized by a draft resolution,” said Bussaina Shaaban, director of Syrian Foreign Ministry’s Information Department (Xinhua News Agency, April 16).

Arab diplomats to the United Nations said Israel is the only country in the Middle East with weapons of mass destruction, Reuters reported.

Syrian officials also countered U.S. allegations that Iraq had smuggled weapons into Syria.

“If Saddam Hussein had mass destruction weapons for so many years, as they say, he would keep them for the war,” al-Shara said.  “Why should they smuggle or send them outside the country during the war?” he asked (Reuters, April 16).

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Japan:  World War II-Era Shells May Be Causing Arsenic Poisoning, Officials Say

Japanese officials believe that leaky Japanese chemical munitions discarded after World War II might have caused a number of arsenic poisonings in the city of Kamisu, the Asahi Shimbun reported today (see GSN, Dec. 10, 2002).

Since 1990, 18 Kamisu residents have sought treatment for symptoms of arsenic poisoning, such as numbness and dizziness.  Since 2000, seven people have been hospitalized.

Officials yesterday said they have discovered diphenylarsonic acid in a well that provides water to eight homes in the city.  The substance is produced when diphenylcyanoarsine, which Japan used to produce chemical weapons during World War II, breaks down, according to the Shimbun.  The Imperial Japanese Navy’s aviation corps stored such weapons at a nearby base before and during the war, officials said (Asahi Shimbun, April 16).

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Syria:  U.S. Officials Warn Damascus to End Weapons Efforts or Risk Sanctions

In a series of coordinated statements, senior White House officials yesterday warned Syria against continuing its suspected chemical weapons efforts, or else run the risk of diplomatic and economic sanctions (see GSN, April 14).

“Syria needs to seriously ponder the implications of their actions,” White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said.  “They need to examine their ties to terrorists, their harboring of terrorists, their harboring of Iraqi leaders, and their development of weapons of mass destruction,” he added (Ron Hutcheson, Miami Herald, April 15).

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell suggested yesterday that the United States could use sanctions to pressure Syria into abandoning its weapons efforts and support for terrorism.

“We will examine possible measures of a diplomatic, economic or other nature as we move forward,” Powell said.  “We’ll see how things unfold,” he said (Barry Schweid, Associated Press/Yahoo.com, April 15).

The United States first accused Syria of developing chemical weapons about 10 years ago, but the White House believes that such efforts have been enlarged and that now is the time to press the issue, according to the Washington Post.  Damascus is believed to have first obtained small amounts of chemical weapons from Egypt in 1973, and is now believed to have accumulated VX and sarin stockpiles, according to experts.  The CIA has noted over the last 10 years that Syria has obtained chemical technology from Russia and Eastern European nations, attempted to obtain materials from China and has frequently conducted tests with chemical munitions, according to a new report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (see GSN, April 11).

U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said yesterday that “we have seen the chemical weapons tests in Syria over the past 12, 15 months.”  There is nothing new in that allegation, however, because Syria has conducted such tests for “more than a decade,” said Anthony Cordesman, who prepared the CSIS report.

The United States could impose a number of different economic and diplomatic sanctions against Syria, as alluded to in Powell’s comments yesterday, according to officials.  While Syria has been subject to U.S. sanctions for more than 10 years already, new restrictions could be imposed under the U.S. Patriot Act on almost every U.S-Syrian financial transaction, the Post reported.  The United States could also alter the status of its relations with Syria, currently the only one of the six U.S.-designated, terrorism-sponsoring countries that enjoys full diplomatic relations, officials said.

Senior Bush administration officials said there are no plans, however, to use military force against Syria.  “We’re trying to scare them for the moment” in the hope that “Syria will change its behavior,” one official said.

Syria denied the U.S. allegations that it possesses weapons of mass destruction.

“There are biological, chemical and nuclear weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East region,” Syrian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Bouthaina Shaaban said.  “They are in Israel, not in Syria,” she added (Karen DeYoung, Washington Post, April 15). 

Mohsen Bilal, Syria’s ambassador to Spain, called the U.S. allegations an “insult” and “blackmail.”

“It’s an insult to my country, an insult to a country that is a member of the U.N. Security Council and an insult to a peaceful country that is struggling and working for a lasting peace in the Middle East,” Bilal said.  “They are blackmailing our country,” he said (Reuters/MSNBC.com, April 15).

Meanwhile, Turkey yesterday cautioned against making Syria the next target of military action, saying the Middle East “is worn out enough” after the war in Iraq.

“In our opinion, no one should allow new conflicts or new tensions in the region.  No one should permit new developments that would further disturb the region,” Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gal said.  “Now Iraq, then Syria then Iran. … These are, of course, very disturbing.  There is a need to demonstrate that these are not true.  The region is worn out enough,” Gal said (Suzan Fraser, Associated Press/Washington Post, April 15).

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