Syria gives help pledge to Iraq president
Syria’s president promised to do what he could to ease tensions in neighbouring Iraq during a landmark visit by the country’s president Jalal Talabani, just days after US president George Bush accused Syria of backing Iraq’s uprising.
A veteran Kurdish politician who spent years in exile living in Syria, Talabani is the first Iraqi president to visit Damascus in nearly three decades. His trip is part of an attempt to warm relations between the long-time rivals.
A prominent Iraqi MP with close ties to Talabani said the president’s visit to Syria was not a snub to Bush. The six-day trip had been planned for nearly a year and its date was finalised about two weeks ago, Mahmoud Othman, also a Kurd, said from Baghdad.
However, he acknowledged that the timing “may seem a little tricky” after Bush’s speech and said Iraq needed to follow its own foreign policy goals independently from America’s agenda.
“Our interests differ from those of the US,” he said. “The enmity between the US and Syria and Iran doesn’t benefit the situation in Iraq.”
The US and Iraqi officials accuse Damascus of providing refuge for Sunni insurgents and allowing them to cross the border freely into Iraq to fight American and Iraqi troops. Syria denies this, saying the Iraqis and their US backers are not doing enough to guard their side of the border.
Talabani went straight from the Damascus airport to Syrian president Bashar Assad’s hilltop presidential palace where the talks were held.
Syria’s official news agency SANA said the talks between Assad and Talabani focused on “bilateral relations” and that both sides expressed a keen desire to strengthen relations between their two countries.
Assad expressed Syria’s readiness to help achieve national reconciliation as well as stability in Iraq and stressed his support for the political process under way in the neighbouring country, the state news agency said.
The leaders agreed to continue consultations and co-ordination on all issues of mutual interest, SANA said.
In his address last week outlining his new strategy for Iraq, Bush lashed out at Syria and Iran, accusing them of supporting militants in Iraq. Bush vowed military action to disrupt militant supply lines coming into Iraq from Syria and Iran.
Syria is a prime candidate for engagement in any regional outreach by Iraq.
Its close relations with Iran are a vital asset given Tehran’s vast influence with Iraq’s majority Shiite Muslims. It also has good relations with the once-dominant Sunni Arabs and plays host to 800,000 or more Iraqi refugees, including stalwarts of Saddam’s Baath Party, known to be active in the Iraqi uprising.
Meanwhile, Iran’s hardline president said the US was trying to hide its failures in Iraq by accusing his nation of funding Iraqi rebels.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad pledged to form an anti-US alliance with “revolutionary countries” in Latin America as he toured the region, courting new allies.
Speaking yesterday on the sidelines of his meeting with Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega in Managua, Ahmadinejad ducked a direct question about whether his country was arming and supporting rebels responsible for countless attacks in Iraq.
He said the claims were merely an attempt by the United States “to cover their failures by other means”.
“But they have been discredited and they can’t recover from that,” he said.
Ahmadinejad said the US’ “attitude won’t solve their problems” in Iraq and accused the US of ignoring the Iraqi people.
