WASHINGTON - Ending a four-year diplomatic embargo on Damascus, the
administration of US President Barack Obama on Tuesday confirmed that it is
sending two high-level officials to Syria this week for "preliminary
conversations", presumably on improving relations.
The trip, which will be undertaken by Acting Assistant Secretary of State for
Near East Affairs Jeffrey Feltman and Daniel Shapiro, a senior staffer on the
National Security Council who also served as one of Obama's top Mideast
advisers during his presidential campaign, was announced by Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton in Jerusalem.
"It is a worthwhile effort to go and begin preliminary conversations," she told
reporters after meeting with Israeli
Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni. "We have no way to predict what the future of our
relations with Syria might be."
The announcement of the trip drew praise, particularly from organizations and
individuals here who were disappointed by former president George W Bush's
refusal to become involved in what they felt were promising Turkish-mediated
peace talks between Damascus and the government of Israeli President Ehud
Olmert.
"Syria plays a key role with respect to stability in the region and Israel's
security," said Debra DeLee, president of Americans for Peace Now, a Jewish
group that has long favored territorial concessions by Israel in exchange for
peace with its neighbors.
"American engagement with Syria, both on bilateral US-Syria issues and in
support of Israel-Syria negotiations, is critically important in determining
whether the role Syria plays in the future will be positive or not," she said.
But other experts here suggested that, while both Washington and Damascus have
been positioning themselves for engagement since Obama's election in November,
finding common ground on key issues, including reviving the Israeli-Syrian
peace track, may prove difficult, particularly if Washington presses President
Bashar al-Assad hard to end his alliance with Iran and support for Hamas and
Hezbollah.
"The demand that Syria abandon its supporters and friends before entering into
full dialogue with the US is no more likely to work under Obama than it did
under Bush," wrote Joshua Landis, a Syria expert at the University of Oklahoma
on his much-read blog, Syria Comment, after the announcement.
Nonetheless, Landis hailed the decision as long overdue, noting that, even if
engagement does not result in major changes in the strategic orientations of
either Washington or Damascus, it can lead to "much greater stability in the
region over the medium term" and "sustains hope among Arab leaders who had
begun to despair after the Gaza war, the economic crisis, and the right's
[election] victory in Israel that the promise of change represented by Obama
was not going to work out."
Under Bush, relations between the US and Syria went from bad to worse. Damascus
opposed the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 and was subsequently accused by
Washington of actively supporting the Sunni insurgency against the occupation.
In 2005, the US pulled its ambassador from Damascus to protest the
assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri, and, one year
later, a top White House official reportedly urged the Olmert government to
extend its war against Hezbollah into Syria. In 2007, Washington praised
Israel's bombing of what it alleged was a secret Syrian nuclear reactor and
subsequently rejected Olmert's pleas to join Turkey in mediating peace talks
between his government and Damascus.
During his presidential campaign, Obama strongly criticized Bush's refusal to
engage Damascus and pledged on several occasions to reverse the policy,
particularly with respect to US involvement in any renewed peace effort between
Syria and Israel.
In recent weeks, the new administration made clear its intention to act on that
pledge. In addition to permitting Boeing to repair two Syrian commercial
airliners, it also backed a high-profile visit by a top ally, Senate Foreign
Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry, to Damascus.
Last Thursday, Feltman, who previously served as Washington's ambassador in
Beirut, met for two hours with Syrian ambassador Imad Moustapha, effectively
ending what had been a multi-year boycott. On the eve of Tuesday's
announcement, Clinton exchanged words and shook hands with Syrian Foreign
Minister Walid Muallem during the Gaza donor conference Monday in Sharm al
Sheikh, Egypt.
According to sources here, Assad will likely press the US delegation to return
an ambassador to Damascus as soon as possible with the understanding that he
will follow through swiftly on his promise to dispatch Syria's first-ever
ambassador to Beirut, despite his strong objections to a Western-backed
international tribunal investigating Hariri's assassination which began its
work in The Hague on Sunday. Syria has denied any involvement in the killing.
The two countries have a great deal more to talk about, however, including
greater cooperation in patrolling Syria's border with Iraq and helping
stabilize the situation in its eastern neighbor. Under Bush, the White House
rejected appeals by its then-Iraq commander, General David Petraeus, to travel
to Damascus. Once Washington has an ambassador in place, Petraeus, now chief of
the US Central Command, is likely to get his wish, according to Landis.
Syria is particularly eager to get back into Washington's good graces in order,
above all, to help revive its economy which remains hard-hit by the imposition
of US sanctions under the five-year-old Syria Accountability and Lebanese
Sovereignty Restoration Act, according to Bassam Haddad, a Syria expert at
George Mason University.
Assad will also no doubt press Washington's envoys on Obama's interest in the
Israel-Syrian peace track which, if successful, could result in the return -
albeit over a lengthy interim period - of the Golan Heights which were seized
by Israel in the 1967 Arab-Israeli War.
Prospects for progress along that track have diminished since last month's
Israeli elections which are likely to result in the formation of a right-wing
government headed by former prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who campaigned
against returning the Golan Heights to Syria.
Nonetheless, Obama may be prepared to exert pressure on Netanyahu to bring him
to the table. Obama's special envoy on Arab-Israeli peace, former senator
George Mitchell, met earlier this week in Ankara with senior Turkish officials
who had mediated the Israeli-Syrian talks before joining Clinton who is herself
scheduled to meet Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey on Saturday.
One of Mitchell's former aides who may soon rejoin his staff, Frederic Hof,
just published a detailed paper on "Mapping Peace Between Syria and Israel"
this week for the US Institute of Peace.
In addition to gaining greater cooperation on Iraq, the new administration will
likely urge Assad to exert pressure on Palestinian Hamas, whose leadership is
based in Damascus, to implement a permanent ceasefire in Gaza and, if Arab
efforts to form a new Palestinian government of national unity bear fruit, to
accept some formula that would meet the quartet's demands that it forswear
violence, accept previous agreements between Israel and the Palestine
Liberation Organization, and offer some form of recognition of Israel's right
to exist, according to Landis.
Ultimately, however, Washington hopes it can break the alliance between Syria
and Iran in order to more effectively isolate Tehran in a much broader
diplomatic effort to persuade it to freeze and roll back what the US believes
is a nuclear-weapons program.
"What seems to be in the air is that there will be some kind of attempt to yank
Syria out of Iran's orbit in return for lifting the Syrian Accountability Act,
pushing Israel harder on the Golan, and a guarantee that the international
tribunal will not harm Syria in a significant way," said Haddad. "But my
personal opinion is that Assad won't break with Iran because it doesn't believe
that the US and the West is committed to the regime's long-term stability,
which is what it's primarily concerned with."
"Frankly, I think it's going to be very difficult to get very far if US
engagement is seen as an attempt to 'flip' Syria away from Iran because it
fears that the US will again fail to deliver Israel, as it did under Bill
Clinton in 2000, and then Syria will be left without a deal and with no friends
or regional leverage," said Landis. "More promising would be an effort to
engage both of them, rather than trying to split them."
Jim Lobe's blog on US foreign policy can be read at http://www.ips.org/blog/jimlobe/.
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