Bush warns Damascus against sheltering Iraqi regime, reviving accountability act
Syria-USA, Politics, 4/12/2003

US President George Bush yesterday sent an implicit warning to Syria, in which he called on Syria to abstain from receiving or helping members of the collapsed Iraqi regime.

Bush's warning came after a step which reflected Washington's approach to translating its extremist stances towards Syria, as Congressman Eliot Engle (N.Y.) and the chairperson of Subcommittee On The Middle East And Central Asia, at the House of representatives, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (FLorida), announced their determination to debate the "Syrian Accountability Act" to vote for it at the Subcommittee, as a preliminary step towards approving this law, which will impose new sanctions on Damascus "unless it halts its support for terrorism and pulls out from Lebanon and stopped developing mass destruction weapons."

Bush said, replying to a question upon inspecting members of the American forces who were wounded in Iraq in one of Washington's hospital, "Syria just needs to know we expect full cooperation, and that we strongly urge them not to allow for Ba'ath Party members or Saddam's families or generals on the run to seek safe haven and find safe haven there. We expect them to do everything they can to prevent people who should be held to account from escaping in their country. And if they are in their country, we expect the Syrians to turn them over to the proper folks."


On the other hand, spokeswoman for the US Department of State, Suzan Beitman, said that the US informed Syria its desire that the Syrian authorities will not permit the passage of the Iraqi officials to the Syrian territories. She added that Damascus notified Washington it had closed the borders except for humanitarian cases and that the American administration hopes this will be so.

Meantime, in Saint Petersburg, the Russian President Vladimir Putin announced yesterday his opposition to practice likely foreign pressures against Syria. He said replying to a question on a likely military attack against Syria, that the German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said that "changing the regime is presumed to come from the people who themselves are subjected to this regime."

Previous Stories:
  Armitaj: we will not attack Syria.. But our relations are difficult   (4/9/2003)
  Powel increase American threats: Syria develops mass destruction weapons   (4/4/2003)
  Al-Assad's interview with Austrian Standard daily on regional issues, US aggression on Iraq   (4/3/2003)

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