Diplomatic dialogue continues regarding US embassy in Damascus
Syria-USA, Politics, 1/4/1999

US diplomatic sources told the London-based al-Hayat daily that "diplomatic dialogue is continuing on a daily basis" between US ambassador in Damascus Ryan Crocker and the Syrian Foreign Ministry concerning the results of the demonstrations which took place two weeks ago in protest against the US - British military strikes on Iraq.

Western diplomatic sources noted that the chairman of the foreign relations committee at the US Senate, Jessie Helms, will ask "an official at the state department to give his testimony on what took place in Damascus." The sources did not confirm nor deny the submitted Syrian "formal apology" to the US embassy over the "great damages" that resulted from the demonstration and the "failure" of the security forces in Damascus to control the demonstrators and prevent them from entering the house of Ambassador Crocker and to break into the embassy.

The sources stated that this issue will be tackled today in the daily briefing to be made by the spokesman for the US State Department in Washington. However, well-informed sources said that the Syrian Foreign Ministry had delivered "a formal apology" as a middle solution between the American request to submit "an open apology" and between the estimation made by officials at the Syrian Foreign Ministry that the "formal statement which was announced by Damascus following the demonstration was a sort of formal and official apology."

But the US officials made distinction between "the regret" stated in the Syrian statement and the "open and formal apology" demanded by Washington.

Moreover, the dialogue between the two sides also dealt with the extent of the "spontaneity in the demonstration" as the Syrian Foreign Ministry stresses that the demonstrations were spontaneous "as thousands of angered students staged the streets of Damascus against the US-British aggression against Iraq," whereas the US embassy is not convinced that the demonstration "was spontaneous and that the Syrian security forces did not carry out their role in preventing the demonstrators from getting into the embassy and the house of the ambassador."

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