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2 Was it really Pelosi in
Damascus? By Sami Moubayed
DAMASCUS - "Our meeting with the president
[Bashar al-Assad] enabled us to communicate a
message from Prime Minister [Ehud] Olmert that
Israel was ready to engage in peace talks" with
Syria. These were the words of Nancy Pelosi,
Speaker of the US House of Representatives, during
her groundbreaking two-day visit to Damascus.
Strange, but if Olmert wanted to send a
message to the Syrians, why would he choose Pelosi
as the messenger, given the variety of other
choices he has at the Bush White House and the US
Department of State? Isn't
Olmert a strong ally of President George W Bush?
And isn't Bush very much opposed to Pelosi's visit
to Syria?
That's what the US media have
been saying this week. Don't Bush and Olmert
disagree with Pelosi on most of her views with
regard to Syria, Iraq and Palestine? Pelosi, after
all, wants to engage the Syrians. Bush and Olmert
do not. Pelosi wants the US Army out of Iraq. The
two men do not. There are two possible answers to
this question.
One would be that Olmert
decided to break with the Bush administration
after the Democratic election victory last year
and rely on the president's opponents in Congress
for his Middle East diplomacy. That certainly is
unlikely. Or maybe Pelosi was actually in Damascus
at the request of Bush himself.
All the
talk about Bush being opposed to her visit,
therefore, would be no more than media jargon,
intended for local consumption in the United
States. This would mean that Pelosi was in
Damascus because Bush wanted her to be in
Damascus. Opposing the visit would save him a lot
of face, given all his rising rhetoric in recent
years on Syria.
Indeed, Bush has raised
the anti-Syrian tone to such an extent that it has
became too difficult for him to retreat without
embarrassing himself. Bush realized he was wrong -
the Syrians were right - and he needed a back
channel to Damascus to help bring about stability
to Lebanon and Palestine - and, more important,
Iraq.
True, Pelosi was carrying a message
from the Israelis, but the real substance of her
visit was a message from Washington, DC. The real
message was: we need the Syrians.
Regardless of who were the architects of
Pelosi's visit, what mattered to the Syrians was
that she was in Damascus. Whether she came with a
peace offer from Israel or a truce from
Washington, they welcomed her as a guest of honor,
with red carpets in the Syrian capital.
She commented, "We were very pleased with
the reassurances we received from the president
[Assad] that he was ready to resume the peace
process. He was ready to engage in negotiations
[for] peace with Israel."
Another question
arises from Israel's peace offer: given the
collective Arab endorsement of the Saudi plan at
the latest Arab summit in Riyadh (supported by
Syria), which calls for peace between Israel and
22 Arab states, why did Olmert convey this message
only to Damascus? Hadn't Bush said in December
2004 that Syria is a "very weak country" that
"just has to wait" until all other pending issues
are solved in the Middle East before restarting
its talks with Israel?
And is Olmert in a
position to talk peace, after his blundering
failure in the war in Lebanon last year where none
of his declared objectives were met? The two
Israeli soldiers taken by Hezbollah are still in
Lebanon, after all, and Hezbollah is still armed
and strong. Can a man who lost a war have enough
credibility to talk peace? One needs to have won a
war to talk peace. That was the case with former
Israeli premier Ariel Sharon, who had enough
legitimacy to talk peace with the Palestinians
because of his war history. It was also the case
with former Palestinian president Yasser Arafat.
Not Olmert. Certainly not after the 2006 war in
Lebanon.
Pelosi added that her meeting
with the Syrian president was "very productive"
and added, "We called to the attention of the
president our concern about fighters crossing the
Iraq-Syria border to the determent of the Iraqi
people and our soldiers."
But something is
wrong here. Hadn't Colonel William Crowe, the US
officer who controls the Iraqi side of its border
with Syria, spoken of the number of fighters
coming in from Syria in January, saying, "There is
no large influx of foreign fighters that come
across the border"?
The final questions
arise from Pelosi's trip to Beirut, before going
to Syria. Speaking with authority, she told the
Lebanese that the US "will not bargain over
Lebanon" and that her visit to Syria "ought not to
be considered as meaning a change in US policy
concerning Lebanon". If Pelosi was not
representing the White House, how could she then
give remarks on official US policy in the Middle
East?
Didn't the Bush administration say
that she did not represent the official government
in her Middle East tour? Or was she mandated to
speak officially on Lebanon, and unofficially on
Syria? She then said from Beirut, after meeting
with parliamentary majority leader Saad al-Hariri,
"The road to solving Lebanon's problems passes
through Damascus." She added that her visit did
not fall within the framework of "illusions" but
"great hope".
Amusingly, Lebanon's
anti-Syrian Future TV said that Pelosi's trip was
intended to scold the Syrians and send them
strong-worded messages from Washington. She didn't
seem to be scolding the
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