— The White House and the State Department continue to assert that the cable sent by President Reagan to President Hafez Assad of Syria last Wednesday did not reflect any change in U.S. Middle East policy and was not meant to soften the criticism of Syria’s military actions in Lebanon voiced two weeks ago by Secretary of State Alexander Haig when he visited Israel as part of his Mideast tour. Haig had forcefully condemned the “brutal” Syrian shelling of Christian areas in north Lebanon.
A White House spokesman told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that the cable was nothing more than a normal message sent by the President to another head of state on the occasion of that country’s National Day of Independence. Syria observed its Independence Day last Thursday.
Reagan’s cable noted the “central role the Syrian people and their leaders can play, not only in the service of their own nation and its independence but in the search for a just Middle East peace…” It expressed Reagan’s strong hope that the two countries could work together during the next year in search of “peace, justice and security” in the Middle East, the White House said.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
