Syria last year continued to provide “support and safe haven to a number of groups that engage in international terrorism” the State Department says in its latest report on global terrorism.
As a result, Syria will remain on the U.S. government’s list of state sponsors of terrorism, as it has been since the list was first compiled in 1979.
Countries on the list cannot receive U.S. foreign aid or any goods or technology that would enhance its military capability or ability to aid terrorist groups.
The finding on Syria was contained in the State Department’s annual “Patterns of Global Terrorism” report, which was released last week.
The report found that the number of international terrorist incidents staged by Middle Easterners increased from 65 in 1990 to 79 in 1991, “largely because of a spate of attacks in Lebanon during the Persian Gulf War.”
A worldwide increase in terrorist incidents, from 456 in 1990 to 557 last year, was also attributed to the war against Iraq.
But 1991 was the second year in a row in which there was no “terrorist spectacular,” the report said.
Nevertheless, Israeli security forces last year “intercepted over 20 attempted guerrilla infiltrations into Israel from Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt,” the report said.
“Several of the attempted cross-border attacks were conducted by Lebanese groups and Palestinian fighters from factions both within and outside” the Palestine Liberation Organization, the report found.
“In most cases, the infiltrators failed to penetrate the Israeli border, and the precise targets of the attacks were not clear,” it said.
NO SYRIAN-SPONSORED ATTACKS
The finding on Syria comes at a time when Damascus has been trying to improve its image in the West. Last week, for instance, the Syrian government announced that it was lifting long-standing travel restrictions on its Jewish population.
The State Department report did find that Syria itself has not “sponsored any international terrorist attacks outside Lebanon since 1987,” a conclusion that would appear to absolve it of any role in the December 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.
But the report said that Syria continues to provide sanctuary to such groups as the Hezbollah, dedicated to creating an Iranian-style Islamic republic in Lebanon, and the Fatah Revolutionary Council, led by Abu Nidal.
The Abu Nidal group, which split from the PLO in 1974, is suspected of carrying out the January 1991 assassinations in Tunisia of PLO deputy chief Abu Iyad and PLO security chief Abu Hul, the State Department said.
Also in Syria is the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, founded in the 1970s by militant Palestinian fundamentalists in the Gaza Strip. The group is committed to destroying Israel through holy war and also opposes moderate Arab governments.
It was the Palestinian Islamic Jihad that attacked a tour bus in Egypt in 1990 that killed 11 people, including nine Israelis.
The group also operates in Jordan, as do PLO elements and the Islamic fundamentalist group Hamas, the report found. But it said that “Jordanian security services are alert to attempted terrorist acts and have detained members of groups” who have been “accused of inciting violence.”
Likewise, Egypt last September arrested armed Islamic Jihad agents “who had entered Egypt with the intention of committing terrorist acts,” the report said.
Saudi Arabia, which unlike the other countries does not share a common border with Israel, “decries acts of terrorism allegedly committed in the name of the Palestinian cause,” the report said.
The royal kingdom “suspended financial and political support for the PLO in late 1990” because of its “pro-Iraqi stance but then reportedly resumed transfer to the PLO of revenue from a tax on Palestinians working in the kingdom in late 1991,” the report said.
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.
