Powell pledges 'candid dialogue' with Syria
US Secretary of State Colin Powell says he plans to have a “good, strong, candid” dialogue with Syrian officials when he travels to Damascus.
“We have issues with the Syrian government that I am going there to talk about,” Powell said yesterday. He said they included support for terrorist organisations, development of weapons of mass destruction and a need to seal the border with Iraq to stop former officials from taking refuge in Syria.
“I will not hold back the strength of our feelings on these positions,” Powell said in a televised interview with the Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation.
And, Powell said, “I am sure they are not going to hold back on responding.”
Powell is planning a stop in Damascus, his third, as part of a trip to the Middle East, probably in early May. On it, he will try to prod Israel and the Palestinians back into negotiations for creation of a Palestinian state.
Meanwhile, appearing at a Council on Foreign Relations session, Senator Bob Graham, a Democrat, said Syria permitted Hezbollah, which is listed as a terror group by the US State Department, to train its forces in Syria as well as in southern Lebanon.
Graham, a former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said a significant number of Hezbollah operatives were in the United States “awaiting instruction to act”.
He called on Syrian president Bashar Assad to shut down the Hezbollah operations in Syria and Lebanon.
But Bouthaina Shaaban, who heads the Syrian foreign ministry’s information office, said Hezbollah was an organisation that fought only to end Israeli occupation of Arab lands and did not target civilians.
Graham said there was no evidence Syria knowingly permitted officials in the Iraqi government of Saddam Hussein to take refuge in Syria. In fact, he said, several of the highest-ranked Iraqi officials had been arrested there, and another top Iraqi’s arrest in Syria would be announced soon.
On another front, Powell said terrorism must end if peacemaking between Israel and the Palestinians was to have a chance of succeeding.
“Let’s be very open and candid.” Powell told the Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation. “Unless terrorism and violence stops, then it’s almost impossible to get going on any process toward peace.”
In a separate interview with al-Arabiya, a television station based in Dubai, Powell notified Israel and the Palestinians that he did not want to debate terms of a peacemaking road map with them when he held talks in the Middle East, probably early next month.
“I don’t want to spend a great deal of time arguing about the details of the road map,” Powell said. “I want to see both sides, in a spirit of co-operation, in a spirit of peace, with the earnest desire to move forward, to start performing.”
The road map was prepared by the United States, the United Nations, the European Union and Russia. It calls for creating a Palestinian state, by 2005, on land now held by Israel.
The plan calls for an end to all violence and a full Jewish settlement freeze in the West Bank and Gaza. It also demands that all settlements built after 2001 be dismantled.
The road map is due to be announced officially after a Cabinet selected by Mahmoud Abbas, the designated Palestinian prime minister, is approved by the Palestinian Parliament.
Powell said he had been in touch with Israeli authorities and found “they are ready and anxious to participate in moving forward with Mr Abu Mazen”, as Abbas also is known.
Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon has stressed terror attacks on Israel must end before he would approve negotiations with the Palestinians.
Powell said he hoped Abbas and Mohammed Dahlan, the designated security chief, “will work hard to end the violence, end the terrorism”.
