APFN
Iraq-Syria oil pipeline shut off
Tue Apr 15 21:57:32 2003
208.152.73.208

U.S. charges against Syria set off alarms

Iraq-Syria oil pipeline shut off
by U.S. forces, says Rumsfeld

NBC, MSNBC AND NEWS SERVICES
http://www.msnbc.com/news/888057.asp?0bl=-0

April 15 — U.S. accusations that Syria has been harboring Iraqi fugitives and has chemical weapons have sparked alarm in the region and words of caution from around the world. Persian Gulf nations, including close U.S. allies, on Tuesday rejected the U.S. charges against their neighbor and called on Washington to stop its threats. Even as the U.S. State Department moved to soften its tone, saying it had “no war plan” for Syria, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said the U.S. forces had shut off an oil pipeline from Iraq to Syria, a move that experts say would inflict a sharp blow to Syria’s already fragile economy.
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FOLLOWING AN EMERGENCY meeting, foreign ministers of six gulf Arab states rejected the accusations against Syria and called on the United States to leave Iraq as soon as possible, handing over control of the country to its people.

“We think the threat to Syria should stop. We don’t think Syria wants a war or to escalate any situation.... We reject any infringement of Syria’s security,” Qatari Foreign Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani told reporters.

“We are watching this with great care, and if there is any problem to be solved, it is to be solved by direct negotiations by both sides,” he said after the emergency foreign ministers meeting in the Saudi capital, Riyadh.

The first clear warning against Syria came early in the war, when U.S. officials accused Syria of sending shipments of military supplies to aid Iraqi fighters. In recent days, the accusations expanded, with Rumsfeld and then President Bush charging that Iraqi officials had fled to Damascus, and that Syria might also be stocking chemical weapons.

Rumsfeld and Army Gen. Tommy Franks, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, also said that U.S. forces had killed a large number of foreign fighters who had come to Iraq to aid President Saddam Hussein, most of them from Syria.

Bush has avoided a direct threat of war, striking a tone similar to that he has reserved for North Korea.

“Each situation will require a different response and, of course, we’re — first things first,” he said Monday, responding to reporters questions. “We’re here in Iraq now. And the second thing about Syria is that we expect cooperation. And I’m hopeful we’ll receive cooperation,” he said.

Trying to calm a charged atmosphere, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said Tuesday the United States has no plans to go to war with Syria or any other country to bring democracy to a totalitarian state.

“Iraq was a unique case, where it wasn’t just a matter of a dictator being there,” Powell said at a news conference with foreign reporters. “There is no war plan to go and attack someone else, either for the purpose of overthrowing their leadership or for the purpose of imposing democratic values.”

Even so, Powell warned: “(Syria) should review their actions and their behavior, not only with respect to who gets haven in Syria and weapons of mass destruction, but especially the support of terrorist activity.... We will examine possible measures of a diplomatic, economic or other nature as we move forward.”

The Syrians have flatly denied the U.S. allegations as misinformation inspired by its arch-enemy Israel.

OIL PIPELINE SHUTDOWN
In a move that could deal a sharp blow to Syria’s economy, U.S. forces shut down a pipeline sending oil from Iraq to Syria, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld said Tuesday.
In an article dated April 10, the newsletter reported that Syria’s state-owned oil marketing company had told clients that its export volumes for the rest of 2003 would be cut in half. “The Iraq-Syria pipeline, passing through northwestern Iraq, was blown up late March 2003 by U.S. troops, as was a railway link connecting Iraq and Syria,” said the article, citing the Kuwaiti Al-Rai Al-Aam daily.

Rumsfeld and Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Tuesday that coalition forces had not destroyed any pipelines.

“They would not destroy the pipeline or any of the other infrastructure,” Myers said.

FEARS OF WIDER GOALS

The sudden focus on Syria alarmed its neighbors. Comments coming from some of the closest U.S. allies in the region made clear their discomfort with even vague U.S. threats and any long-term U.S. presence in Iraq.

“Iraq is now considered occupied, and we hope there will be a civil administration of the Iraqi people as soon as possible. We hope this will happen in the coming weeks,” said Sheikh Hamad of Qatar.

“The creation of an Iraqi transitional government is very important because Iraqi people won’t accept a government from outside for very long,” he added.

The United States has said it plans to set up an interim administration to run Iraq for several months.

Members of the Gulf Cooperation Council — a political, economic and military alliance grouping Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait and Oman — together own nearly half the world’s oil reserves.

Kuwait was the main launch pad for the Iraq war, Qatar hosts the main U.S. and British command center for the U.S. campaign, and Bahrain is the headquarters of the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet.

No statement was issued at the end of the Riyadh meeting, called by regional heavyweight Saudi Arabia. Riyadh plans to host another emergency meeting Friday of countries in the region including Turkey and Egypt to discuss the situation in Iraq, the first such gathering since the war began on March 20.

Iran, too, weighed in on behalf of its allies in Damascus, saying it would not remain neutral if the United States attacked Syria.

“We will not engage in military confrontation with the Americans but will employ all our nonmilitary facilities to prevent such an attack or to support Syria,” said Mohsen Rezaei, former chief of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.
Many Arabs, already deeply skeptical about the war on Iraq, fear Washington’s stream of broadsides means the war on Iraq could extend to other Arab states.

“Who the hell do the Americans think they are? They are so predictable. Before the war, we all said the U.S. would start in Iraq and then target other Arabs. And here we have it,” Egyptian doctor Noha said. “Who’s next after they destroy Syria? Egypt?”

LEADERS SPEAK OUT
Encarta: Syria profile

Concern was not confined to the Middle East.
Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar said Tuesday that Syria was a friend of his country and would not be the target of any military campaign.

“Syria has been and will be a friend of Spain. It will not be the target of any war actions,” said Aznar, one of the staunchest supporters of the U.S.-led war in Iraq.

Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien, on a trip to the Dominican Republic, told reporters that the U.S. allegations should be addressed in the U.N. Security Council, while the European Union’s foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, said that “the region is going through a very difficult process, and I think it would be better to make constructive statements to see if we can cool down the situation.”

In New York, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said he was “concerned that recent statements directed at Syria should not contribute to a wider destabilization in a region already affected heavily by the war in Iraq.”

SYRIANS BEFUDDLED
In Damascus, few Syrians understand why President Bush is coming after them. Their country, they feel, has cooperated in the war against terrorism, and gave Arab cover to U.N. Resolution 1441 demanding Saddam disarm or face the consequences.

“They are extremely disappointed,” said Maggie Mitchell at the Washington-based Middle East Institute, who recently met with officials in the Syrian capital. “They helped in the fight against al-Qaida, and they went against Syrian and Arab public opinion to back a resolution that the United States used to go to war against Iraq.”

Relations between Syria and the United States have always been uneasy, complicated by Syria’s close ties to the Soviet Union during the Cold War era and its hard-line stance on the Mideast peace process.

But despite its outwardly inflexible attitude to the United States, Syria has always been careful to keep the thin diplomatic ties from snapping.

In the 1991 Gulf War, Syria quietly sent troops to join the U.S.-led campaign to oust Iraq from Kuwait. It has shed most of the closed, socialist image that characterized it when it was a Soviet ally.

After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, Syrian President Bashar Assad sent a warm letter of condolences to Bush, and there was intelligence cooperation on terrorism. Syria has for years been watching the extremist Muslim groups that it had fought in the 1980s.

ASSAD’S BALANCING ACT

Complicating matters is that Assad is surrounded by an old guard who helped bring him to power after the death of his father, Hafez Assad, in June 2000. The father took over in a bloodless coup in 1970 and maintained a vast army of secret police and informers. He was accused of jailing thousands of political prisoners without trial.

For the old guard, steeped in the Cold War, close ties with the United States violate core principles of the ruling Baath Party and go against Syria’s image as a champion of Arab rights.

They also aren’t giving Assad, an eye doctor who came to power with little political experience, the chance to introduce limited reforms, especially in the economic and financial sectors.

Now, Syria finds itself squeezed from almost all sides: from Washington, from the presence of U.S. troops next door in Iraq, from Israel to the south and from Turkey, with whom Syria has water problems, in the north.

Turki al-Hamad, a prominent Saudi political analyst, said the United States is likely to hit Syria with a long list of demands, including making peace with Israel, dissolving the ruling Baath Party, expelling militant Palestinian groups, ending support for the militant group Hizballah, and liberalizing the economy.

Those are a series of steps that Syria, hailed by many Arabs as the last bastion of Arab nationalism, may find difficult to follow.

NBC’s Bob Windrem, The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
Rumsfeld said at the daily Pentagon briefing that coalition forces shut down the oil pipeline but that he was not sure whether it was the only pipeline to Syria and couldn’t say whether oil was still flowing between Iraq and Syria.

There are allegations that Syria has been receiving up to 200,000 barrels of oil per day through the pipeline — in violation of U.N. sanctions against Iraq.

Oil traders and U.S. officials say that a complete cutoff of Iraqi oil to Syria, which is believed to meet about one-third of Syria’s oil needs, would send a strong message to Damascus. The country’s economy is in trouble, with gross domestic product growth barely keeping up with population growth.

The Iraq-Syria pipeline may have been out of commission since late March, according to a report in the newsletter Middle East and Africa Report.

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