Osage's Current French Problem:
France Shows Solidarity With Damascus
By BENNY AVNI Special to the New York Sun
UNITED NATIONS — President Bush yesterday accused Syria of having chemical weapons and warned it against trying to help the remnants of Saddam Hussein’s regime.
Even as the president spoke with reporters on his return from Camp David, France publicly displayed its solidarity with Syria — its former colony and its last remaining Ba’athist ally.
"We believe there are chemical weapons in Syria," Mr. Bush told reporters in the Rose Garden in a move seemingly calculated to ratchet up the rhetorical pressure on Iraq’s neighbor.
This was the first time such an accusation was raised by anyone in the administration. It also represented a clear escalation in the barrage of almost daily warnings from Washington directed at Damascus.
Mr. Bush however, was careful not to threaten military action. "They just need to cooperate," Mr. Bush said."We expect cooperation, and I’m hopeful we’ll receive cooperation," he added.
Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld refused to specify how the administration would respond if Saddam turns up in Damascus. But appearing on CBS, he said that in such a case, "Syria would have made an even bigger mistake." American officials continued to accuse Damascus of harboring remnants of Saddam’s regime, including two female scientists implicated in biological warfare: Huda Salih Mahdi Ammash, known as "Mrs. Anthrax," and Rihab Taha, nicknamed "Dr. Germs" and considered the highest ranked female Iraqi Ba’ath member. The last visible official of the regime, United Nations ambassador Mohammad Aldouri, was also reportedly on his way to Damascus after leaving New York over the weekend.
Syria sought to defuse the growing tension. Its foreign ministry spokeswoman, Buthayna Shaaban, told Al-Jazeera television Syria’s borders with Iraq are closed and reiterated that none of the Iraqi leaders had asked to come to Syria.
"As you know, Syria’s history with the Iraqi regime have never been cordial, but we have always been keen about the Iraqi people," she said.
The increasingly sharp tone in Washington toward Syria prompted criticism from French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin, on a tour of Arab capitals this weekend. His most prominent stop was Damascus, where he visited President Bashar Assad on Saturday. In a demonstration of solidarity with the Syrian regime, Mr. De Villepin shared a press conference with Foreign Minister Farouk al-Shara.
He did not go so far as to endorse Syrian denials of harboring escaped Iraqi leaders and a cache of weapons of mass destruction smuggled from Iraq, but his defense of the Ba’athist leaders in Damascus sounded very much like his earlier defense of Saddam’s regime.
Rather than mending fences with Washington in the post-war environment, France thus signaled a continuation of its policy of confrontation with the sole world superpower.
American officials said over the weekend that they captured numerous Arab nationals, including many Syrians, fighting in Iraq. General Tommy Franks said in television appearances that many of them were recruited in Damascus and went to Iraq through Syria.
Syria also continues to assist Hezbollah, an organization based in Syriancontrolled Lebanon, which was implicated in numerous terrorist acts in Israel and around the world, including against American targets.
"He is acting very irresponsibly," Dore Gold,an Israeli government adviser, told the Sun, referring to President Assad. "I’m not sure he knows what he is doing."
But for Mr. de Villepin — who also included stops in Egypt, Lebanon, and Saudi Arabia in his trip — Syria was unfairly criticized. He warned of the consequences of confrontation with Syria.
"The time is not correct. The time is to work together," Mr. de Villepin said in Beirut, referring to the critics in Washington. "The time is for consultation, for dialogue."
He offered instead five steps for solving the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, which he claimed were consistent with the so-called "road map," a plan endorsed by a quartet consisting of Washington, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations.
Mr. de Villepin, however, seemed to go further than the quartet, offering an international conference, hosted of course by France, that would conclude the "peace of the brave" — a term favored by Mr. Arafat.
Jerusalem is strongly opposed to any significant international — other than American — involvement in the Palestinian track.
"Who needs the involvement of Europe, Russia and the U.N. after they failed so miserably on the eve of the war? " Mr. Gold said. These, especially France, are considered in Jerusalem too friendly to Arab states, and their defense of Iraq in the Security Council confirmed that notions to many in Israel.
