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	January 26, 2002	atimes.com

Front

Syria turns to Iraq in moment of need
By George Baghdadi

DAMASCUS - Iraq's Deputy Prime Minister Tarek Aziz says that his country is ready to defend itself should military strikes against Afghanistan by the United States extend to Iraq.

US warplanes on Thursday bombed Iraqi air defense targets for the third time in the week after US officials warned Baghdad that time was running short to allow United Nations arms inspectors back into the country.

Aziz, who was on his way to meet with Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk Al-Sharaa in the Syrian capital Damascus, also rebuffed as "blackmail" the assessment by the US that his country is a threat to global peace.

The US says that there is every indication Iraq has been "aggressively pursuing weapons of mass destruction capability" in the three years since it forced UN inspectors to leave.

Damascus has been the scene of a flurry of US diplomatic missions since the beginning of this year. Only last week, two groups of US lawmakers visited Damascus to discuss the global war on terrorism and, apparently, Syrian rapprochement with Iraq.

The US National Intelligence Estimate has suggested, in a recent report, that the US will most likely face threats from intercontinental ballistic missiles from North Korea, Iran, and possibly Iraq before 2015.

"Who can accept the idea that Iraq constitutes a threat to the United States? This is false to reality and facts," Aziz told reporters. "The US judgment is no more than a blackmail. But anyway, we are prepared for all possibilities," said the minister, who later proceeded on his mission to Russia and then to China.

US President George W Bush said this week that his country's action against Iraq remained an option, but added that he was in no hurry to make a decision about it. "Iraq is on the screen. I mean, after all, they're not letting our inspectors in," he said.

"It is assumed - in accordance with logic and international law - that US self-defense should take place in the United States and not in Iraq and that when US planes violate Iraqi space it would be committing an aggression against Iraq. Then we have the full right to defend our sovereignty," Aziz said.

There was still no Syrian word on the visit, which coincided with that of Kuwait's state minister for foreign affairs, Mohammed Sabah Salem al-Sabah.

However, both Arab officials have denied that Damascus is mediating between the two countries in a bid to narrow the differences brought about by Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990 prior to the Arab summit in Beirut in March.

"Our position regarding Iraq is nationalistic and unequivocal: we are against the targeting of any Arab country without exception," Syria's Information Minister Adnan Omran, whose country joined the US-led coalition that routed Iraq from Kuwait in the 1990-91 Persian Gulf crisis, said in a recent interview.

"The excuses the Americans are using to accuse Iraq are laughable and have nothing to do with UN resolutions," added the veteran Syrian official. "Even Kuwait is in line with the joint Arab position ... that opposes any aggression against Iraq.

"They have divided Iraq along imaginary lines, carving up one enclave in the north and another in the south; even the country's airspace has been divided in a way that bears no relation to UN resolutions," he said, referring to no-fly zones enforced by US and British warplanes in northern and southern Iraq.

US and British warplanes have patrolled such zones in northern and Iraq for a decade since the 1991 Gulf War. They are periodically challenged by anti-aircraft guns and surface-to-air missiles.

Syria and Iraq, ruled by rival factions of the Socialist Baath Party, have in recent years worked to rehabilitate ties that were in effect severed when Damascus broke ranks and sided with Iran in the 1980-88 war with Baghdad.

The efforts were stepped up when Bashar al-Assad succeeded his father, Hafez, as president in 2000.

The Syrian economy is struggling - with per capita income barely rising - and Iraq is now a valuable export market, despite the constraints of UN sanctions against Baghdad.

Trade between Iraq and Syria resumed in 1997, and Syrian exports jumped from a total of US$500 million in 1997 to $1 billion in 2001, and is expected to double again this year.

Oil analysts say that Iraq, in return, has been exporting oil to Syria through a rehabilitated pipeline that fell into disuse in the early 1980s. One analyst says that Syria receives 125,000 barrels per day of Iraqi oil, which it consumes at home, helping it export 340,000 barrels per day of its own production that constitute about 60 percent of Syrian export earnings.

Issam al Zaiim, Syria's industry minister, has repeated denials that the country was pumping any Iraqi oil, other than a small amount necessary for maintenance, as this would contravene United Nations sanctions against Iraq.

"Trade increases Iraqi influence, moving the pressure away from its own borders," said a Western diplomat. "It certainly gives it clout in Damascus. Aside from disrupting trade, US action against Iraq could produce widespread Arab resentment. This would make Syrian cooperation with the US next to impossible."

However, the official Syrian Arab News Agency said only that "Sharaa and Aziz discussed the latest regional and international developments and ways of reactivating joint Arab work in the framework of the Arab League".

Assad and his Arab counterparts have repeatedly said that they oppose expanding the US campaign, which initially focused on removing the Taliban from power in Afghanistan, to include any Arab state.

Egypt and Jordan, important US allies and supporters of the campaign against terrorism, both fear that a US strike on Iraq, coupled with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, would send the whole region up in flames.

"Every now and then, Iraq's national sovereignty is violated in an unacceptable and unjustified manner. This not only abuses UN resolutions, it also violates the UN charter," one Syrian source said.

(Inter Press Service)

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