OkyDoky Assad, there it is. Dubya is offering you your own “Gaddafi deal”, your own private "Come to Jesus" meeting if you will... and you'd best take it too boy, cause if you don't - - - well, lets just say, all bets are off!!!
Posted on 10/14/2005 5:16:12 PM PDT by JustAnotherOkie
THE Bush Administration has offered Syria’s beleaguered President a “Gaddafi deal” to end his regime’s isolation if Damascus agrees to a long list of painful concessions.
According to senior American and Arab officials, an offer has been relayed to President Assad that could enable him to avoid the looming threat of international sanctions against his country. The matter could come to a head as early as next week when Detlev Mehlis, the head of the United Nations team investigating the murder of Rafik Hariri, the former Lebanese Prime Minister, is due to submit his report to Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary-General.
While details of that report are not yet known, it is widely expected that senior figures in the Syrian intelligence services, which until earlier this year were in control of Lebanon’s security, will be named as accomplices. The assassination was widely blamed on Damascus, and consequently relations have been badly damaged with key Syrian allies such as France and Saudi Arabia. Already strained relations with Washington have become even more fraught. Evidence of Syrian complicity could lead to international sanctions and make the country a pariah state.
“Assad is facing a tough time ahead and he has very few friends left,” said a senior Arab diplomat. “He is desperately looking for a way out of this predicament.” Mr Assad said this week that contacts had resumed between Damascus and Washington via Arab intermediaries, thought to be Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
“There has been an attempt to resume co-operation, basically through mediation, by some Arab and European states,” he told CNN. The Times has learnt that the American proposal is very specific, with at least four key demands being made of Damascus. Syria must first co-operate fully and adhere to any demands by the UN inquiry into Mr Hariri’s assassination.
If members of the Syrian regime are named as suspects they would have to be questioned and could stand trial under foreign jurisdiction.
The Syrians would also have to stop any interference in Lebanon, where they have been blamed for a series of bomb attacks against their critics, most recently May Chidiac, a television presenter who was badly injured last month when a device exploded under her car. Washington also wants Syria to halt the recruiting, funding and training of volunteers for the Iraqi insurgency, which they claim are openly operating in Syria with the connivance of the regime. They include former members of the Iraqi regime and foreign volunteers responsible for suicide car-bomb attacks.
The Bush Administration also has a long-standing demand that Syria cease its support for militant Islamic organisations such as Lebanon’s Hezbollah and the Palestinian groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad. In return America would establish full and friendly relations with Damascus, opening the way for foreign aid and investment and ensuring the regime’s survival.
Last night, a source close to the regime in Damascus confirmed that the offer had been presented by a third party in the past ten days and that the Syrians had signalled a willingness to co-operate. The Americans are convinced that if Syria was prepared to commit such a radical volte face it could transform the whole climate in the Middle East — freeing Lebanon, dealing a serious blow to the insurgency in Iraq, and opening the way for progress between Israel and Palestine.
The precedent for the offer is the deal clinched two years ago with Colonel Muammar Gaddafi of Libya. His regime was isolated internationally after it was blamed for the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie. After more than a decade, sanctions were lifted when Tripoli handed over two intelligence officers to stand trial in a Scottish court and paid compensation to the relatives of the victims. Full relations were restored after Washington and London concluded a secret deal with Mr Gadaffi to dismantle and turn over all his nuclear, biological and chemical weapons programmes.
The Americans have now reopened their embassy in Tripoli, US oil companies are operating in Libya and recent visitors have included Tony Blair and top British businessmen.
The main question troubling the Americans is whether the Syrian leader is strong enough and bold enough to cut a deal. There are even doubts that he is really in control of the country. Some suspect it is run by various security services in the hands of his extended family. Asef Shawkat, his brother-in-law, is head of military intelligence. Maher al-Assad, his brother, commands the presidential guard. British diplomats do not believe that the Syrian leader will take the offer, not least because it would be regarded as a huge climbdown and a betrayal of Syria’s hardline policies established by his late father, Hafez al-Assad.
Washington has made clear that if the Syrians do not co-operate, it intends to increase the pressure on the regime. One consequence of that pressure was the death this week of Ghazi Kanaan, the Syrian Interior Minister and a key witness in the UN inquiry. He was found shot dead in his office. The authorities said that he had taken his own life, but many suspect he was killed by those who feared what he might divulge from his time as head of Syrian Intelligence in Lebanon.
A Syrian source close to the ruling family predicted that Mr Assad would turn down the deal. “The regime has calculated that it has the resources to survive for quite some time even if it is isolated,” said the source. “The strategy could be to manage the conflict until external pressures ease.”
Baby Assad is going to the matteresses....dumb move to make with Bush in charge.
She will send a message to Assad telling him to hang on until '08 and she will make a better deal for him.
The questions are: Why has Bush delayed in going after Syria? It is widely known as a haven for Hezbollah and other terrorist groups as well as training Arabs to enter Iraq to fight the evil Americans. Not to mention the strong rumor that Iraqi WMDs made their way into Syria from Iraq prior to our invasion. Why the delay? Why the failure to even bomb the training camps etc?? Inquiring minds want to know.
I'm not so sure that wouldn't me a smart move (where 'smart' means how best to preserve Assad's tottering medieval dictatorship). After all he's basically banking on holding out just another 2.5 years or so until President Bush's term is over. In the meantime he knows full well that unless he does something REALLY stupid, there is almost zero chance of significant military intervention by us.
And then in 2008 of course he would bank on the best possible of outcomes from his point of view.. Hillary....
I don't think Assad or his merry band of thugs can go 2.5 years that Bush has left in office...without doing something very stupid.
Assad will turn down the offer, while at the same time ending sanctuary for Al Queda and Iraqi-Baathist insurgents. He will figure that that will undercut US sanctions against him. But he will continue supporting other Arab terrorist groups aligned against Israel; because outside of the US he has enough international support for those efforts, and without the aid he gives to Hamas and Hezbolla, he loses financial support from Iran.
Hahah, that is no doubt very true! Happy freepin' ! ;)
I hope it works. If you can get these kinds of concessions without going to war, it is a good deal. Course I am sure the usual nay sayers will grumble about it. You note no one in media is giving Bush credit for Quadaffi giving all his nuclear stuff to us.
Either way he losses. As more Syrians see how unwilling he is to do anything for them, just like Saddam.They look at what is happening in Iraq. They look at him. They see no difference. They see what happened to Saddam. They start to think it is time to riot in the streets in huge numbers and demand he step down and the cruel regime stops plundering away what little they have left. The government realizes the US will not just sit by forever and allow them to keep pumping out terrorist. Things could get a bit nasty once the new Iraqi government takes hold early next year. HINT: Where are all those freed up American battallions now handing over all those FOB's to the Iraqi forces going to reside, and what are they going to be doing in the next six months. Just a thought.
Well, it ain't going to happen without the Saudis.
Carping about insurgents on the border with Iraq for 2 years has done nothing, so Assad is safe there.
But when Hariri (a Saudi dual citizen with royal family ties) was killed he was called to Saudi. Shortly after after his visit he remarkably pulled out of Lebanon.
I don't think he'll do it unless they can pin the murder on him somehow.
Might get UN trade sanctions, Syria doesn't have a lot of oil to bribe Russia and China with.
Don't forget. Iraq after it's election in December will have every right to declare war on Syria if it continues to harbour terrorists attacking its country. I am sure the US and UK will side with Iraq.
After 9/11 I expected the USA to offer a "Ploma o plata" deal to all nations- make peace and get rich, make war and get dead.
Boy, was I stupid or what?
Syria's Bekka Valley has been a haven for terrorists since before I was born. That particular cesspool should have been cleansed decades ago. Immediately post 9/11 we could have done it. Unfortunately it seems that the leader of the free world would rather kowtow to "world opinion" than take the fight to the enemy wherever that may take us.
I wonder if he can afford not to - there's always been plenty of speculation that he's mostly a figurehead/puppet of the old guard.
OkyDoky Assad, there it is. Dubya is offering you your own “Gaddafi deal”, your own private "Come to Jesus" meeting if you will... and you'd best take it too boy, cause if you don't - - - well, lets just say, all bets are off!!!
Politics is so complicated. International politics is way complicated!
It's a very good deal for the Syria tyrant. However, one has to wonder if it is a good deal to make a deal with a tyrant. Especially one that can be squished so easily.
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