US President George W Bush on Tuesday warned that US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Syria sent ‘mixed signals’ that undermined US-led efforts to isolate Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
In his first public remarks on the visit, Bush took a very dim view of US and European diplomats reaching out to Damascus, declaring that ‘sending delegations hasn’t worked. It’s just simply been counterproductive.’
‘We have made it clear to high-ranking officials, whether they be Republicans or Democrats, that going to Syria sends mixed signals, signals in the region and, of course, mixed signals to President Assad,’ he said.
‘Photo opportunities and/or meetings with President Assad lead the Assad government to believe they’re part of the mainstream of the international community, when, in fact, they’re a state sponsor of terror,’ said Bush.
The US president’s remarks came in a question-and-answer session with reporters in the Rose Garden of the White House shortly after Pelosi became the highest ranking US official in four years to visit Syrian officials.
Syria is ‘helping expedite, or at least not stopping, the movement of foreign fighters from Syria into Iraq,’ Bush charged, adding that Damascus has ‘done little to nothing to rein in militant Hamas and Hezbollah’ and worked to ‘destabilise the Lebanese democracy.’
‘There have been a lot of people who have gone to see President Assad: Some Americans, but a lot of European leaders, high-ranking officials. And yet we haven’t seen action. In other words, he hasn’t responded,’ said Bush.
‘It’s one thing to send a message. It’s another thing to have the person receiving the message actually do something,’ said the president, who last year rejected a heavyweight bipartisan commission’s call to engage Syria and Iran in a bid to pacify war-torn Iraq.
‘The position of this administration is that the best way to meet with a leader like Assad or people from Syria is in the larger context of trying to get the global community to help change his behaviour,’ he said.
However Pelosi, the House of representatives Speaker, is now in Syria emphasising just how deep the split is in the US ruling class over its policies for the Middle East and the Gulf.
Pelosi arrived in Syria on Tuesday on a two-day visit and was met on arrival by Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem.
After shaking hands with Muallem, Pelosi and her delegation boarded a bus and left the airport for an undisclosed destination.
With Damascus seeking a new balance in Washington’s Middle East policies, the leading Democrat said her planned talks with Assad were key to renewing dialogue on the troubled Iraq and Lebanon issues.
Pelosi was expected to meet Assad and other officials on Wednesday before heading to Saudi Arabia for the last leg of her regional tour.
The state media in Damascus hailed her visit as a possible breakthrough, with the English-language Syria Times describing Pelosi as a ‘brave lady’ on an ‘invaluable’ mission.
‘American legislators, Democrats as well as Republicans, are aware that US policy in the region, especially the war in Iraq and its ties with Syria, is a fiasco that must be repaired,’ said the government daily Tishrin.
‘Syria is ready for serious and sincere dialogue with the US officials,’ said Tishrin, which said it saw ‘great hopes of a rebalancing of US policy in the region.’
Bush’s administration has boycotted Damascus since the February 2005 assassination of Lebanese former prime minister Rafiq Hariri in which a UN investigation has implicated Syrian officials despite Damascus’s firm denials.
Washington imposed economic sanctions on Damascus in 2004, accusing Syria of harbouring terror groups, backing insurgents in Iraq and meddling in Lebanon.
An angry White House has accused Pelosi of undermining US-led efforts to isolate Assad.
But Pelosi insists her mission falls in line with the bipartisan Iraq Study Group ‘which encourages such diplomacy and engagement’ with Washington’s foes Damascus and Tehran, to help resolve crises in Lebanon and Iraq.
‘Our trip to Syria is one that is important to us. . . and is part of our responsibility for the national security of the United States,’ Pelosi said.
During her visit, ‘we will be talking about the overarching issue, the fight against terrorism and the role that Syria can play to help or to hinder that role.’
She noted that three Republican politicians from the president’s party visited Damascus on Sunday.
Syrian ambassador to the United States Imad Mustafa told Tishrin that Pelosi’s visit was ‘a positive step. . . in the framework of a calm dialogue’ between the two countries.
‘We may differ politically but we must remain involved on the diplomatic front in a dialogue in order to reach some understanding,’ he said.
Pelosi, who has already held talks in Israel on her Middle East tour, was expected to transmit the Jewish state’s views on the long-stalled peace process with Syria, which demands the return of the Golan Heights seized in 1967.
Before heading to Damascus, she held talks in the occupied West Bank with Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas.
‘It was a very good meeting, it was an in-depth discussion,’ said Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat.
Abbas told the top Democrat that it was ‘essential for the Israelis to accept the Arab peace initiative,’ he said.
Arab heads of state last month renewed a five-year-old offer of full normalisation of relations in return for a complete withdrawal from all Arab lands seized in the 1967 Middle East war.
Pelosi’s delegation includes Democrat Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to the US Congress.
Doctor Sabir Falhut, deputy head of the Arab Journalists Union and member of the Syrian People’s Assembly have commented on the Pelosi visit to Syria.
On the importance Syria attaches to the visit, Falhut said that the visit is no doubt ‘important’ since Pelosi is the most senior US official to visit Syria in years, and described it as ‘a hole in the wall that is the US boycott of Syria’ and a chance for Pelosi to learn of Syria’s ‘honest, transparent, and clear opinion on the region’s events since Syria is a compulsory passage for those wishing to understand the region’s events and contribute to a just peace in it.’
On whether or not Pelosi can really break through the ‘wall of isolation around Syria,’ Falhut hoped she can in the light of her position at the ‘top of the legislative authority in the country of institutions in America,’ and when reminded that Pelosi was among ‘the strongest advocates of the 2003 Syria Accountability Bill,’ he said: ‘I believe there has been a US realisation following the Baker-Hamilton report, the miserable failure in Iraq, and the escalating events in the region, all of which have to positively affect positions towards Syria and the region’s events.’
Falhut doubts that Pelosi carried an Israeli message to the Syrians, and said: ‘Our position on a just and comprehensive peace is clear and our conditions for negotiations with the Zionist enemy are known to all – they are the achievement of a just and comprehensive peace that returns lands to their owners and rights to the people. There is no need for messages because Syria’s stands on this matter are extremely clear and precise.’
He stressed Syria’s keenness on identifying the perpetrators of the Al-Hariri assassination and its desire to see the Iraqi people liberated, recuperated, and united, adding that Syria will tell Pelosi that ‘Hezbollah is a resisting political faction in Lebanon that made all the strugglers and the Arab nation proud with its defeat of the Zionist enemy, and as for our Palestinians brothers in Syria, they are guests in their country, and anyone wanting peace must return them to their homes.’
Mahdi Dakhlallah, the former Syrian information minister, also commented from Damascus.
Asked if Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit could have an impact on US-Syrian ties, Dakhlallah says: ‘It is certainly a step in the right direction. It shows that all attempts to isolate Syria have failed and also reflects a serious split between the Congress and the US Administration.’
He went on to say that Pelosi’s visit to Syria proves that ‘the US policy in the region has failed and that what Syria warned against four years ago had actually happened following the war in Iraq. Based on these two reasons, Syria welcomes such a visit.’
He noted that there are ‘major differences’ over issues that Pelosi will raise during her visit to Damascus, referring to statements made by Pelosi during her visit to Lebanon, which he says showed that she ‘sided with one party against the other’.
When asked how Syria welcomes such a visit at a time when there is much talk about the establishment of an international tribunal that functions under Chapter Seven of the UN Charter, which many see as something that would harm Syria, he says: ‘The international tribunal is not against Damascus, which is not directly related to this issue.
‘Damascus was not consulted about this Lebanese issue. The important thing is not to politicise the tribunal so that all Lebanese parties support this tribunal.’
