WASHINGTON, March 2 (JTA) — The United States no longer wonders whether or not Syrian President Bashar Assad is a reliable diplomatic partner. The question now, according to an official close to government deliberations on whether to sanction Syria, is why Assad is proving so hopeless. “The debate on Bashar Assad is not ‘Can we work with him;’ its more, ‘Why is he such a disaster?’ ” one official said Tuesday. “Is he incapable or unwilling?” Assad, a London-trained ophthalmologist, was regarded as pro-Western when he assumed power upon his rejectionist father’s death in 2000. Since then, however, Assad’s policy decisions have stunned Americans, especially in two areas: He granted Hezbollah greater power in Lebanon just when Israel’s withdrawal would have allowed him to quash the terrorist group, and he ended a decades-long feud with Saddam Hussein exactly when the United States was urging countries to distance themselves from the Iraqi dictator. Officials don’t know whether Assad is making the decisions on his own or whether he is in thrall to his father’s old guard. Whatever the case, Assad’s poor performance helped ruin his recent efforts to reach out to Israel to renew talks through back channels such as Turkey. Bush administration officials have discouraged Israel from taking up the offers, believing them to be red herrings designed to distract the West from Syria’s continuing support for terrorism. “Everything the Syrians are doing lately is taken with a grain of salt and a view to the Syrian record of supporting international terror and its behavior vis-a-vis the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq,” the administration official said. Israel still regards Syria as its most immediate enemy. The Arrow anti-missile system, which is expected to provide Israel with carpet protection against missiles by the end of the decade, was planned with a belief that Syria has more than 300 missiles in its arsenal, according to Gen. Arieh Herzog, who heads Israel’s missile defense program. One concern Herzog underscored in a recent interview is Syria’s recent development of Scud C missiles, which have a range that allows them to hit Israel from anywhere on Syrian territory. That would complicate Israeli efforts to detect a launch and intercede. Senior officials at the Pentagon, the State Department and the White House’s National Security Council are discussing what to report to Congress by its May deadline on whether Syria is complying with last year’s Syria Accountability Act. That act, which the president signed in December, imposes trade sanctions on Syria and gives the president a range of other possible punitive measures unless Syria ends its support for anti-Israel terrorist groups, pulls its troops out of Lebanon, ends its weapons of mass destruction programs and keeps anti-U.S. insurgents from crossing its borders into Iraq. At the White House’s insistence, the bill allows the president to suspend its stipulations every six months for reasons of national security, but he must explain why in a report to Congress. In testimony to the U.S. House of Representatives last month, Secretary of State Colin Powell said the officials were examining the sanctions options “to see how to use the lever.” If Syria fails to meet the conditions, the act calls on President Bush to suspend the export of anything that could be used for weapons manufacture and to choose two from a list of six possible sanctions. Recent pronouncements suggest that a negative report to Congress — followed by sanctions — may be inevitable. Administration officials have confirmed reports that Syria used planes providing earthquake relief to Iran in December to bring back weapons for Hezbollah, which continues to attack Israel despite Israel’s U.N.-sanctioned withdrawal from Lebanon in May 2000. Last month, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who was party to the sanctions talks, told the Senate that Assad’s “is a regime that has been almost consistently unhelpful.” “We know that he is working with Iran in funding Hezbollah and bringing them down through Damascus into Lebanon, into Israel,” Rumsfeld said. “We know he’s testing chemical weapons.” Assad also was refusing U.S. administrators in Iraq access to Iraqi government money in Damascus, he said. Even officials at the State Department, usually the strongest advocates for continued engagement with Syria, are sounding a note of despair. “Syria can take the road to a meaningful involvement in the Middle East or can take the road which leads to more isolation,” Richard Armitage, the deputy secretary of state, said in a recent interview with the Gulf News newspaper. “So far, I don’t think that President Assad has made up his mind.” Armitage noted a few positive developments along the border with Iraq and in tracking down Al-Qaida terrorists but said Syrian aid to Hamas and Hezbollah was still a problem. He reminded Syria of the approaching deadline for a decision on sanctions. “As we approach May, we will see if President Assad and his colleagues want to have a more congenial relationship with the U.S.,” Armitage said. One immediate sign of goodwill, Bush administration officials have suggested, would be for Syria to emulate Libya and open its weapons of mass destruction systems to immediate inspection. “It would be more productive for Syria to get rid of its WMD,” State Department spokesman Adam Ereli said last month. “Look at what Libya did.” Bush was never enthusiastic about signing the sanctions bill — he did so on a Friday evening, Dec. 12, a time when he typically slips in legislation he’d rather not deal with. When he signed it, Bush reiterated what presidents traditionally believe is their exclusive right to set foreign policy, saying that he reserved the right to waive the sanctions without explaining why to Congress. “A law cannot burden or infringe the president’s exercise of a core constitutional power by attaching conditions precedent to the use of that power,” the White House statement said. But in an election year, with Democrats eager to undercut Bush’s reputation as close to Israel, he might have little choice but to impose sanctions. Congressional pressure already is underway, and last month Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Penn.) co-signed a letter urging the president not to waive the sanctions. That leaves the question of what sanctions to introduce. The ban on the export of any item that could be converted to weapons use is required in any case, but Bush also must choose two sanctions from a list of six. Armitage counted out one possible sanction — the recall of the U.S. ambassador to Damascus, Margaret Scobey. Some Democrats in Congress expressed outrage at her recent appointment, saying it undercut the act. “We don’t want to have a hostile relationship” with the Syrians, Armitage said. “We don’t wish them ill.” Three options relate to trade: One would block U.S. exports to Syria, one would ban U.S. investment in Syria and one would ban any transaction in which the Syrian government has an interest. Those could present problems to the U.S. oil industry — traditional backers of Bush — which reportedly has $600 million invested in Syria and is still bidding on exploration contracts. That leaves two weaker options Bush could explore: Keeping Syrian diplomats in the United States within 25 miles of their missions, and banning Syrian flights from U.S. airspace. Such flights are infrequent in any case.
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