Washington Note: Bizarre Media Cycles for Bashar

[Landis analysis] The UN nuclear investigation could be the new Hariri investigation for the “isolate-Syria” crowd. For several years the UN investigation into the Hariri murder gave neo-cons hope that they would be able to carry out regime-change in Syria on the cheap, by tripping up Syria’s leadership in a web of international sanctions, UN strictures, and legal snares. The Hariri investigation seems to have petered out and no longer inspires much enthusiasm, even in the most neo-con of circles. The American backed Israeli strike on the military plant on the Euphrates has opened up a new avenue for international probes. It is likely that Syria will reject further UN visits to Syria, which will leave the Security Council to decide whether to sanction Syria or not. The international community has lost its taste for hard ball, which the Bush administration used with such disastrous results.

All the same, the nuclear issue will give Obama’s new foreign policy team pause in re-engaging Syria. That may be all the anti-Syria crowd needs to trap the new administration in a cycle of confrontation. The first few months of the Obama presidency will be decisive in setting the agenda for the Arab-Israeli conflict. If Syria is ignored or if it senses that Obama may continue Bush hostility toward Syria, such as by pushing for a Lebanese confrontation with Hizbullah, blocking Iraqi rapprochement with Syria, teaming up with “moderate” against “trouble-making” Arabs, or by pampering Netanyahu obstructionism, Syria will consolidate its resistance alliances and become insensible to future backtracking by the West. Syrian distrust of the West’s intentions is so lively after eight years of Bush, that only a clean break from past policy will help lure it out of its defensive tuck.

It may turn out that the neo-conservatives have been successful at one thing, which is to push the center of US Middle East policy away from Israel and the traditional Arab-Israeli conflict toward the Gulf. With our troops on the ground, it may be too much to expect Obama to squander his domestic Jewish political capital, which he seems to have amassing with skill, on squeezing Israel. Perhaps the only hope is if Obama can get Hillary Clinton to accept the Secretary of State position so she spends her Jewish capital on a peace push.

The US will most likely continue to give international and political cover to Israel while settlers extend their grip on the West Bank. Hope for a two state solution is dwindling fast. Of course Obama will have to establish a mechanism to pretend to do something and perpetuate popular hopes that there is a solution, but I don’t suspect that the mechanism will mitigate Palestinian weakness. It may help bring the Saudis and “moderate” Arabs along on whatever course he decides on for security architecture in the Gulf. This is the direction indicated by the Saudi-Israeli dance over the “Arab” peace plan rather than pushing hard nosed negotiations directly between Syria and Israel.

U.N. Watchdog Finds Nuclear Threats in Syria and Iran
By JAY SOLOMON
The Wall Street Journal, 20 November 2008

United Nations investigators found “significant” traces of uranium used in reactors at the wreckage of a Syrian facility that Israel bombed last year, and Iran is rampingup production of nuclear fuel while denying investigators access, the International Atomic Energy Agency reported Wednesday.

The U.N. nuclear watchdog’s findings about nuclear development in Iran and Syria underscore the proliferation threats President-elect Barack Obama will face upon taking office in January.

Tehran is running nearly 4,000 centrifuges and plans 3,000 more, despite U.N. Security Council resolutions calling for a suspension, the IAEA said, and inspectors aren’t being given access to sites or documents connected to possible military components of Tehran’s nuclear program.

The Syria discovery, which had leaked out last week, bolsters Bush administration claims that Damascus was covertly developing a nuclear reactor. European officials said their governments have begun briefing Mr. Obama’s advisers on how to jointly address the Iranian nuclear challenge. They expressed hope that the arrival of Mr. Obama, who has pledged to engage Tehran and Damascus more directly than his predecessor, could jump-start stalled diplomacy….

Iran, Syria Fail on UN Nuclear Cooperation, IAEA Says (Update1)
By Jonathan Tirone
Bloomberg, 20 November 2008

Iran and Syria have failed to provide sufficient assistance with two separate investigations into suspected clandestine nuclear work, the United Nations atomic agency said.

“Iran has not offered any cooperation with the agency” to clear up allegations that it has sought to develop a weapon, the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency said in a report.

A Syrian site bombed by Israel in September 2007 on suspicion that it was an undeclared atomic reactor had “significant” quantities of uranium particles, and shared some characteristics of a reactor, the IAEA said. The UN agency said it hasn’t yet received documentation to support Syria’s stance that it was a conventional military facility.

Files on the two probes, transmitted to the IAEA’s 35-member board of governors, may increase pressure on the Middle Eastern countries to cooperate more extensively with the investigations. Iran has been under UN investigation since 2003 for allegedly seeking to develop nuclear weapons, a charge it denies.

AFP, 20 November 2008

“While it cannot be excluded that the building in question was intended for non-nuclear use, the features of the building … along with the connectivity of the site to adequate pumping capacity of cooling water are similar to what may be found in connection with a reactor site,” the IAEA said in a restricted report, a copy of which was obtained by AFP.

Experts Urge Obama To Engage Early On Middle East
by Michele Kelemen
NPR, 19 November 2008

As President-elect Barack Obama’s transition staff looks at foreign policy, the Middle East and its many trouble spots will loom large. Some experts are advising Obama and his team to show early engagement in what they see as the region’s core issue: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

There are growing doubts that a viable Palestinian state could emerge to live side by side in peace with Israel. President Carter’s national security adviser, ZbigniewBrzezinski, told a group at the Aspen Institute that “the two-state solution is beginning to run out of room for implementation.” He added, “Presidentialinvolvement here is essential.”

European foreign policy officials have put the Middle East peace process at the top of their wish list for a new U.S. foreign policy approach. The European Union’s ambassador in Washington, John Bruton, has encouraged the Obama administration to take a hard look at Israeli settlement expansion in the West Bank. He argues that as Israelis head to the polls in February, they “need to know that there is an administration in Washington that wants the two-state solution to work, not just in theory, but in practice and soon.”….

At the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, scholar David Makovsky predicts that the incoming Obama administration will want to facilitate talks between Israel and Syria, now an ally of Iran. “I see the approach to be somewhat like Henry Kissinger did with the Egyptians in the 1970s,” Makovsky says. “Namely, Kissinger was very skillful in prying Egypt away from the Soviet orbit.”

The question for the next administration, he says, is whether it can do anything comparable with a “willing Israeli government in prying away Syria from an Iranian orbit?”

Iran Is ‘The Greatest Danger’

A former undersecretary of state for political affairs, R. Nicholas Burns, warns that Iran is a major threat — not just because of its nuclear ambitions, but also for its support of terrorist groups and its overall influence in the region. “Iran has influence in Iraq and Afghanistan, and sometimes uses it against American interests,” he says. Iran is “the greatest danger and the greatest problem for the new administration, and it is going to have to be dealt with in an early stage,” says Burns,…

The administration will be torn in many directions, but needs to focus on all of these issues, from negotiations with Iran, the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and a potential Israeli-Syrian track to helping Iraq as U.S. troops withdraw.

In the New York Observer, here (Via FLC)

“[Hillary's] top, top, top advisers told me, ‘Steve, she will animate things in the Middle East—she will deliver a Palestinian state. Gold-plated,’” said Steven Clemons, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation in Washington.

Latest poll gives Likud big edge over Kadima
By Yossi Verter

Benjamin Netanyahu and Likud have had a good three weeks, with no major slips, with brand new faces and with a good press, while Kadima is bleeding and Labor is disintegrating.

The opinion polls are responding in kind: Likud opened a large, decisive lead of six MKs over Kadima. The right-wing bloc, led by Likud, is also firming up in comparison to previous polls, with 64 MKs versus 56 for the center-left. In effect, the right is much stronger than the center left, since its count also includes 11 MKs from the Arab parties: They will not be asked to join the governing coalition and in the current political climate their only use will be as part of a “preventive bloc” in the Knesset.

Secretary Condoleezza Rice Says it is all about Lebanon (Via to FLC)
Washington, DC November 18, 2008

QUESTION: Madame Secretary, Foreign Minister – British Foreign Minister Miliband has said today in Syria that Damascus has played a positive role in Lebanon and Iraq lately. What do you think?

SECRETARY RICE: I think we are all very much following what is going on in Lebanon, and I’m looking forward to listening to Mr. Jumblatt as he tells me about the preparations for the election. And we continue to support a democratic and sovereign and independent Lebanon, and everything that the United States is doing is to that cause. And anyone and any state that demonstrates its commitment to Lebanon’s sovereignty and independence should be welcomed to that cause. I just think it’s important to demonstrate it.

Dallying with Syria
Financial Times, 19 November 2008

First France, and now Britain. The courtship of Syria proceeds apace. There is, of course, nothing wrong with engagement, as the Bush years have taught us. Ideally, however, robust diplomacy should be harnessed to a coherent strategy. That is what is lacking in the cosying up to Bashar al-Assad and his regime.

Mr Assad owes his re-entry into polite geopolitical society in the first instance to Nicolas Sarkozy. ….

Report: Lebanese spy trained in Israel (Thanks Danilo)

….His mission in Syria also focused on scouting the city of Damascus, including Kfar Soussa where top Hizbullah commander Imad Mughniyeh was assassinated. Cities like Tartous, Hama, Allepo and Homs also were scouted….

Bilal Saab on Syria’s recent tactical readjustments in foreign policy, which appeared in the most recent issue of Jane’s Foreign Report.

Iran Has Enough Fuel to Make Atom Bomb, Experts Say: NYTimes, 2008-11-20

Iran aims for 2009 launch of nuclear plant
Reuters, 18 November 2008

Iran is aiming to commission its first nuclear power plant in 2009 after years of delays, the official IRNA news agency reported on Tuesday.

Russia has already delivered nuclear fuel under a $1 billion contract to build the Bushehr plant on the Gulf coast in southwest Iran. But the start-up timetable has frequently been put back because of issues such as a row over payments.

Russia agreed to build the plant in 1995 on the site of an earlier project begun in the 1970s by German firm Siemens. The Siemens’ project was disrupted by Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution and the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war.

“The commissioning stage of Bushehr nuclear power station has begun and we are hopeful the power station will be commissioned in 2009 as per the agreement we have had with the Russian party,” the spokesman for Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, Mohsen Delaviz, was quoted a saying.

He did not give a more precise date.

“There is a good environment prevailing in our relations with the Russians and we are hoping they will honor their commitments,” he added.

Atomstroyexport, the Russian firm building the plant, said in September the plant was nearing completion and that it would start “technological work” in December 2008 to February 2009 that would put the plant on an “irreversible final” course.

Analysts say Russia has used Bushehr as a lever in relations with Tehran. It had previously said it expected the plant to start up some time this year.

Iran is at loggerheads with the West over its nuclear program that Tehran says has only civilian aims but which the United States and its allies say is a smokescreen for building atomic weapons.

Peres: Turkey, Iran offer differing models
AP, November 18 2008

…. “Many Muslims will have to make their choice between the Iranian school of domination and the Turkish school of cooperation,” Peres said in a speech at Oxford University.

Peres ignored hecklers declaring their support for a Palestinian state and told an audience of around 1,000 university students that Israel was negotiating with Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon to find peace in the Middle East…..

Earlier in the day, Peres had spoken on Syria and said making peace with Syria depends on whether Damascus is prepared to rein in Iranian-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Peres said in a BBC radio interview Tuesday morning that Syria cannot expect Israel to withdraw from the Golan Heights while Iran furthers its influence in Lebanon with the help of Syria. Israel is not prepared to tolerate an Iranian presence on its border, Peres said…

Berri urges Kuwait to mediate between Syria, Saudi Arabia
By Hussein Abdallah
The Daily Star, 19 November 2008

Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri urged Kuwait’s emir on Tuesday to play a role in achieving a rapprochement between Syria and Saudi Arabia. Following talks with Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Jaber al-Sabah in Kuwait City, Berri said that relations between Arab states should improve, stressing that a “Syrian-Saudi rapprochement is a must.”…

Kuwaiti Speaker Jassem al-Khorafi, who attended the meeting, praised Berri’s concern for Arab unity as well as the “resistance’s victory against Israel in the summer war of 2006.”

Late on Monday, Berri told members of the Lebanese community in Kuwait that he was confident that the situation in Lebanon would improve, adding that Lebanese parties were committed to forging political reconciliations…

Iraq: “Worse than the occupation itself!” – On the US-Iraqi security agreement (mideastwire.com)

On November 20, Syria’s state-controlled Teshreen daily ran a column by Ezz al-Din al-Darwich saying that whatever one chose to call the US-Iraqi security agreement, it “contradicts with the sovereignty of countries and does not conform to the provisions of international law”.

“In addition, it provokes the fears of the Iraqis, or at least most of them, and pushes Iraq’s neighbors to raise dozens of questions about the content, the timing, and the short and long term purposes of this agreement.”

Some say it is merely a gift to outgoing US President George Bush, who caused Iraq’s problems.

“Iraq’s neighboring countries have the right to express their fears and to take necessary cautionary steps and exercise vigilance, since their experiences with the Americans are very bitter,” al-Darwich wrote, in a reference to Syria.

“The US raid on the Boukamal area in Syria is still in the minds of the Iraqis, the Syrians and all the Iraqi neighboring countries. Thus, the Iraqis affirm that this agreement is worse than the occupation itself.”

Petition will urge Damascus to free imprisoned dissidents
By Dalila Mahdawi
The Daily Star, 19 November 2008

The Samir Kassir’sEyes (SK EYES) organization announced on Monday that it was launching a petition calling for the release of 12 Syrian dissidents jailed for having signed the Damascus Declaration. SK EYES, which is dedicated to defending cultural and media freedom in the Arab Levant, was initiated by the Samir Kassir Foundation but officially launched as an independent organization earlier this month. It collects and distributes information about attacks against writers and journalists in the region.

Speaking at a press conference, internationally acclaimed Lebanese novelist and journalist Elias Khoury, who heads the SK EYES coalition of journalists, activists and intellectuals, told reporters “the campaign also aimed to support Michel Kilo and Mahmoud Issa, detainees who have still not been released despite the decision of the Syrian Court of Cassation to overturn their sentences”.

Kilo and Issa are both signatories to the Damascus Declaration, issued in 2005 by a number of Syrian opposition parties and intellectual figures seeking to “establish a national democratic regime [for] … change and peaceful political reform based on dialogue.” Since then, many of the Declaration’s signatories have been imprisoned, put under house arrest or dismissed from their jobs. In October, 12 of its signatories were sentenced to 30 months imprisonment for “inciting sectarian strife” in Syria.

Speaking to The Daily Star on Tuesday, Khoury said that “the oppression of culture and media is a sign of the decadence in the Arab world.” He added, “Without freedom in the region, its societies are condemned to become prisons.”

Ammar Abdulhamid’s al-Tharwa organziation has put together a most useful and enlightening series of interviews with poor Syrians. Also see the interview with David Commins: Syrian Identity Through History

[Landis analysis] Two pieces of important news. Al-Baradei claims that the traces of uranium discovered at the Euphrates bomb site do not mean there was a reactor. He has demanded greater Syrian and Israeli cooperation. The Syrians are unlikely to allow further teams of investigators to explore Syrian sites. 

Miliband in Damascus

Second, Miliband, Great Britain’s foreign minister, did two important things. He visited Damascus, which raises the pressure on Obama to revise US policy toward Syria. He has asked Syria to push harder for advances on the peace process - but this should be read in two ways - one as a genuine message to the Syrians, but two is a message to Washington to throw its weight behind the talks and to place the Syrian-Israeli peace negotiations high on its agenda.  Gordon Brown has already state that Mr Obama’s foreign policy priority should be the Arab-Israeli conflict.

The announcement that Miliband has re-established high level intelligence sharing with Syria is also significant. Secretary Rice and Foreign Minister Mu`allim discussed restarting intelligence sharing in May 2007 at Sharm al-Sheikh, but Syria asked the US to return an ambassador to Damascus as a sign of Syria’s cooperation. The US refused this gesture, forcing the US military “to take matters in their own hands.” Ultimately, the politicians in Washington forced the Defense department to settle the border issue militarily - hence the raid last month that killed eight Syrians. (We still have no proof that the Americans killed or captured the “facilitator” Abu Ghadiyya, whom they claim they snagged n the raid. I find it a bit odd that they have not shown us a photo of the man as they did with Saddam or his sons. Why all the secrecy about a raid they claimed as a stunning success and a person they have told us so much about?)

At any rate, the Syrians clearly offered the British the same offer they made to the Americans well over a year ago. The difference is that the British have been smart enough to take the offer, sending their foreign minister to Damascus as a gesture of good will and cooperation. So the British will now supply the US with Syrian intelligence. This will be awkward for the Americans; they will be dependent on the British for intelligence. Of course, if the Americans like the bits of intelligence they get from the Syrians, they will have to ask for more and will have to ask the Syrians to act on the intelligence or to deliver certain fighters. In this way, one can only presume that the Americans will start to negotiate with the Syrians indirectly. Just as the Syrians talk to the Israelis through the Turks, the US will talk to the Syrians through the British. The silliness of this will strengthen the Defense Department’s hand in insisting that Washington politicians do the right thing and grow up. It is just plain silly. Syria wants to help the US kill al-Qaida types, but the US refuses to say yes. How goofey is that? If Obama doesn’t send someone of stature to Damascus to fix this, I will eat my hat.

(By the way, Colonel Patrick Lang just visited the University of Oklahoma to give a lecture. It was very nice to meet him after years of reading his fine blog. He gave an excellent and sweeping lecture on the state of the Middle East. He was the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency’s Middle East stuff for some years, the head of human intelligence, was military attache in Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Yemen, a Green Baret and many other things to boot. 

Syria nuclear clues ‘not damning’
BBC News, 17 November 2008

… “There was uranium but it doesn’t mean there was a reactor… It’s not highly enriched uranium,” Mr ElBaradei added.

The US has said the target of Israel’s raid in September 2007 was a secret nuclear reactor built with North Korean help that was nearing completion. ….

The director of the UN atomic watchdog, has said a report he is due to present later this week on Syrian nuclear activity will “not be conclusive”. “We still have work to do,” …..”We need more co-operation from Syria… We need also co-operation from Israel,”…..

Britain re-establishes high-level intelligence links with Syria
The Times, November 19, 2008
Richard Beeston, Catherine Philp and Oliver August

Syria is known to have excellent intelligence on tracking the movements of Islamic extremists into Iraq Britain re-established high-level intelligence links with the Syrian authorities as David Miliband made his landmark visit to Damascus yesterday, according to senior Syrian officials. …

In their first phone call since the US election, Gordon Brown emphasised that Mr Obama’s foreign policy priority should be the Arab-Israeli conflict, which he sees as the key to other concerns in the region, including the threat of a nuclear Iran.

Joshua Landis, an American expert on Syria, said the visit was “a message from the British to Obama. Like the French, they want the US to push Syrian-Israeli peace. Negotiations between Syria and Israel began last May, but the Bush Administration was unhappy about the dialogue and refused to support them.”

Iran aims for 2009 launch of nuclear plant  Iran (Thanks FLC)

The move, first raised earlier this year at a meeting in New York between the Foreign Secretary and his Syrian counterpart, Walid Moualem, was a key objective of the Syrian visit. The newly revived intelligence relationship could be hugely beneficial to Britain. Syria is known to have one of the best intelligence-gathering systems in the Middle East, in particular in tracking the movements of Islamic extremists into Iraq and around the region.

Israel believes that there is a chance for dialogue with Iran if Barack Obama succeeds in uniting the international community behind a common policy.

Shimon Peres, the Israeli President who arrives in London tonight, said that his country’s most implacable foe could be brought to the negotiating table depending on a new political climate and economic factors, in particular a falling oil price.

The veteran politician, who turned 85 this summer, also told The Times that he expected Israel to achieve peace with its Arab neighbours within his life time, and even predicted that he would one day visit Damascus and Riyadh.

His upbeat message will no doubt be dismissed by many in the Middle East as the musings of a lifelong optimist. Certainly no recent Israeli leader has expressed any positive view of Iran, whose nuclear policy and support for militant groups is regarded as the major existential threat to the Jewish state…

POSTGLOBAL: A Debate Blog on Foreign Policy and International Affairs
Iran losing clout in Iraq?
Foreign Policy, 16 November 2008

A sampling of the blog’s debate topics and authors:

SAMI MOUBAYED, Syria
Region’s Dynamic Will Change, Regardless of the Outcome
Peace isn’t likely, but a regional shake-up is…

YOSSI MELMAN, Israel
Missing from Talks: Sincerity
Neither Syria nor Israel is prepared or willing to make the necessary concessions…

MAZIAR BAHARI, Iran
Talks Poised to Bring Iranian Rebirth
Iran will gain ground in the tug-of-war with the United States…

“….The changes were mostly minor, according to people close to the negotiations, but may have allowed Iraqi politicians to portray themselves as driving a tough bargain. Lawmakers are wary of appearing too pro-American, and some faced pressure from Iran, which strongly opposes the accord, Iraqi officials and analysts said…”

The choice for Obama lies on the road to Jerusalem
By Philip Stephens
Financial Times, November 13 2008

..Yet here Mr Obama has promised least. True, he has made the right noises about throwing his authority behind a two-state solution. There is talk of the appointment of a special US envoy to take a permanent seat at the negotiating table. As yet, however, Mr Obama has given little sign that he is ready to invest the energy and political capital to broker a deal.

You can see why. The Annapolis process, the belated effort by the Bush administration to secure an accord, has gone nowhere slowly. This week the outgoing administration all but abandoned hopes of progress before Mr Bush leaves the White House.

Tony Blair, the United Nations’ special envoy to the region, displayed all his trademark optimism by insisting that a “platform” was in place for a final settlement. We have heard that one before.

The polls suggest that the Israeli elections are unlikely to deliver a coalition with the authority to strike a land-for-peace bargain with the Palestinians. Benjamin Netanyahu, the hawkish Likud leader, may emerge as prime minister. During his last spell in office Mr Netanyahu sought to derail the Oslo accords. I have heard it said that the one meeting that went badly during Mr Obama’s tour of the Middle East and Europe this year was his encounter with Mr Netanyahu.

For their part, the Palestinians remain divided in spite of the best efforts of Egyptian mediation. Hamashas so far refused to offer the recognition of Israel demanded by the international community. In the absence of a committed interlocutor on the Israeli side, it is hard to see what would prompt Fatah and Hamas to settle their differences.

So why should Mr Obama risk his reputation in such a cause? The answer comes in several parts…

In Lebanon, puritanical Sunnis and a reputed playboy team up in politics
By Borzou Daragahi
Los Angeles Times, 17 November 2008

When it comes to strange Middle East bedfellows, Lebanon’s latest politicalpartnership may be the most unlikely: The leader of one party has a reputation as a playboy with ties to neoconservatives in the Bush administration. The other group is widely viewed as a community of extremists whose puritanical strain of Sunni Islam inspired Osama bin Laden.

Lebanon’s Salafists, often equated with terrorists in much of the Arab world, have teamed with Saad Hariri and his mainstream Future Movement to become part of the country’s political order.

“They used to be very marginal,” Benedetta Berti, a terrorism specialist at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University in Massachusetts, said of the Salafists. “Now, they have to be taken into account by any political movement. They have become a significant political force. Not by number, but in terms of the political impact they could have.”

The curious experiment, in one of the Arab world’s most democratic political systems, could have implications for the rest of the region. In Egypt, Tunisia, Syria and Algeria, Salafists are often tossed into dungeons.

“One of the main reasons Salafists join the jihadist . . . and terrorist groups is because of alienation and marginalization,” said Mustafa Allouch, a Future Movement lawmaker from Tripoli. “They don’t find any hope for expressing their ideas. It’s better to accept all types of ideas and put them under the light so they don’t grow in the darkness…”

In Now Lebanon: Additional confessions link Fatah al-Islam with Syria, according to TV news report

In Now Lebanon:  Miliband arrives in Beirut, says he is pleased with Syrian-Lebanese relations 

In McClatchy’s, here

“The status of forces of agreement between the United States and Iraq goes further than most people in the United States realize. It contains no provisions for the U.S. to leave behind a residual force recently mentioned by Barack Obama or the trainers that have long been part of the withdrawal discussions …Unless the agreement is amended, which would require the formal written approval of both sides, in three years there no longer would be any legal basis for U.S. armed forces or civilian contractors of the Department of Defense to remain in Iraq. If Iraq wants American forces to leave earlier, it could terminate the agreement with one year’s notice. The United States has the option to do the same…”

The Syrian News Agency says Assad expressed Syria’s deep concern over the “deteriorating situation in Gaza” during a meeting in Damascus Sunday with Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa. SANA said Assad stressed the need for the 22-member Arab League to take decisions at an Arab ministerial meeting in Cairo later this month to put an end to the Israeli siege.

Pact, Approved in Iraq, Sets Time for U.S. Pullout
By CAMPBELL ROBERTSON and STEPHEN FARRELL
New York Times, 16 November 2008

Iraq’s cabinet on Sunday overwhelmingly approved a proposed security agreement that calls for a full withdrawal of American forces from the country by the end of 2011. The cabinet’s decision brings a final date for the departure of American troops a significant step closer after more than five and a half years of war.

The proposed pact must still be approved by Iraq’s Parliament, in a vote scheduled to take place in a week. But leaders of some of the largest parliamentary blocs expressed confidence that with the backing of most Shiites and Kurds they had enough support to ensure its approval.

Twenty-seven of the 28 cabinet ministers who were present at the two-and-a-half-hour session voted in favor of the pact. Nine ministers were absent. The nearly unanimous vote was a victory for the dominant Shiite party and its Kurdish partners. Widespread Sunni opposition could doom the proposed pact even if it has the votes to pass, as it would call into question whether there was a true nationalconsensus, which Shiite leaders consider essential.

The proposed agreement, which took nearly a year to negotiate with the United States, not only sets a date for American troop withdrawal, but puts new restrictions on American combat operations in Iraq starting Jan. 1 and requires an American military pullback from urban areas by June 30. Those hard dates reflect a significant concession by the departing Bush administration, which had been publicly averse to timetables…

Barack Obama links Israel peace plan to 1967 borders deal
By Uzi Mahnaimi and Sarah Baxter
Times Online, 16 November 2008

Barack Obama is to pursue an ambitious peace plan in the Middle East involving the recognition of Israel by the Arab world in exchange for its withdrawal to pre-1967 borders, according to sources close to America’s president-elect.

Obama intends to throw his support behind a 2002 Saudi peace initiative endorsed by the Arab League and backed by Tzipi Livni, the Israeli foreign minister and leader of the ruling Kadima party.

The proposal gives Israel an effective veto on the return of Arab refugees expelled in 1948 while requiring it to restore the Golan Heights to Syria and allow the Palestinians to establish a state capital in east Jerusalem.

On a visit to the Middle East last July, the president-elect said privately it would be “crazy” for Israel to refuse a deal that could “give them peace with the Muslim world”, according to a senior Obama adviser…

Kissinger Says Clinton Would Be Outstanding at State
By Cherian Thomas and Julianna Goldman
Bloomberg, 17 November 2008

Henry Kissinger said Hillary Clinton, a leading contender to be the Barack Obama’s Secretary of State, would be an “outstanding” appointment.

“She is a lady of great intelligence, demonstrated enormous determination and would be an outstanding appointment,” Kissinger, who served in the post from 1973 to 1977 under presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, told the World Economic Forum’s India Economic Summit in New Delhi today.

New York Senator Clinton appears to be President-elect Obama’sleading choice for the job, according to a Democrat familiar with the matter. Clinton, who lost to Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination, flew on Nov. 13 to Chicago, where the two met.

“If it is true, it will show a couple of things,” Kissinger said. “It shows great courage on the part of the president-elect to appoint a very strong personality, who has an independent constituency, into a cabinet position. It also shows willingness on the part of Clinton to subordinate herself to someone whom she lost out to.”

Former President Bill Clinton declined to speculate today on whether his wife may be offered the job.

“If Obama did decide and they do decide to do it together, I think she’d be really great at being secretary of state,” the former president said after speaking at a symposium in Kuwait. “Whatever happens or doesn’t happen is between Obama and her…”

Professor Hired for Outreach to Muslims Delivers a Jolt
By ANDREW HIGGINS
Wall Street Journal, 15 November 2008

Muhammad Sven Kalisch, a Muslim convert and Germany’s first professor of Islamic theology, fasts during the Muslim holy month, doesn’t like to shake hands with Muslim women and has spent years studying Islamic scripture. Islam, he says, guides his life.

So it came as something of a surprise when Prof. Kalischannounced the fruit of his theological research. His conclusion: The Prophet Muhammad probably never existed.

Muslims, not surprisingly, are outraged. Even Danish cartoonists who triggered global protests a couple of years ago didn’t portray the Prophet as fictional. German police, worried about a violent backlash, told the professor to move his religious-studies center to more-secure premises.

“We had no idea he would have ideas like this,” says Thomas Bauer, a fellow academic at Münster University who sat on a committee that appointed Prof. Kalisch. “I’m a more orthodox Muslim than he is, and I’m not a Muslim.”

When Prof. Kalischtook up his theology chair four years ago, he was seen as proof that modern Western scholarship and Islamic ways can mingle — and counter the influence of radical preachers in Germany. He was put in charge of a new program at Münster, one of Germany’s oldest and most respected universities, to train teachers in state schools to teach Muslim pupils about their faith…

Syria heartened by Obama’s plan for Iraq: envoy
By Louis Charbonneau
Reuters, 14 November 2008

Syria said on Friday it was heartened by U.S. President-elect Barack Obama’s plan to pull U.S. combat troops from Iraq within 16 months of taking office since it reflects the desire of Iraq and its neighbors.

Damascus’s Deadly Bargain
by Lee Smith
Hudson Institute, 14 November 2008

….To better understand Syria’s motivations, I visited Abdel Halim Khaddam, Syria’s former vice president, in Brussels, where he was leading a meeting of the National Salvation Front (NSF), a Syrian opposition group. Having served under both Hafez al-Assad and his son Bashar, Khaddam is well-acquainted with the strategic and political exigencies driving the regime’s support for terror. “Fighting the Americans in Iraq is very dangerous,” he tells me. “But it also makes Bashar popular. Under the banner of resistance, anything is popular.”

Thus, it seems the first reason Syria backs these militants is because it wins public acclaim. As is the case in many countries across the Arab world, most Syrians distinguish between terror and resistance. They define the former as violence that hurts Syrians and Syrian interests–such as the Muslim Brotherhood’s war against the Syrian state in the late 1970s and early ’80s, for example. But resistance is the violence that the Syrian regime makes possible at the expense of other states–from Lebanon to Israel to Iraq–strengthening its position as the self-described “capital of Arab resistance…”

Assad urges Arab action to break Gaza siege
AP, 16 November 2008

Syrian President Bashar Assad has called for Arab League action to help break Israel’s siege of the Gaza Strip.

No longer the pariah President - Bashar al-Assad - profile/Peter Beaumont

No longer the pariah President
Peter Beaumont
guardian.co.uk, Sunday November 16 2008
The Observer, Sunday November 16 2008

David Miliband’s visit to Damascus this week indicates the new thaw in the West’s relationship with Syria. But while the leader’s charming wife boosts his carefully managed image, doubts remain about a much darker side.

Bashar Assad, President of Syria, is good at the people stuff. He pops his head around the door during an interview with his wife, then, all arms and legs, ushers you away, unexpectedly, for an informal chat. He talks smartly and engagingly. He talks about the prospects for peace with Israel. The dangers of the ‘War on Terror’. Relations with an increasingly bellicose US.

That was five years ago. Since then others have visited and drunk his coffee out of tiny bone-china cups in a palace largely used for ceremonial meetings, and got the same treatment. By and large they have emerged charmed by the gawky Assad and by his English-born wife Asma. And not a little baffled.

Forty-three-year-old Bashar Assad gives good interview. In such encounters over the years he has emerged as self-deprecating, thoughtful and concerned. Which leaves the conundrum over Bashar Assad and his Syria: which is how to square this carefully managed image, designed for media and diplomats, with the allegations that have been levelled against the police state he rules?

Since coming to power on the promise of reforming the paranoid state overseen by his father, Bashar Assad’s regime has been blamed for the 2005 assassination of Lebanon’s former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in a car bomb - which he denies. He has allowed al-Qaeda in Iraq to set up bases on his territory for fighters heading across the border, resulting in last month’s cross-border raid into Syria to attack one such safe house - also denied, but increasingly less plausibly. Syria has been charged, too, with assisting the re-arming of Hizbollah after the 2006 Israeli war against Lebanon - which it does not dispute - and accused of setting up a joint project with North Korea to construct a secret nuclear reactor, subsequently bombed by Israel, which it still does.

It is a moot point, however, just how clumsy Syria has been - despite its designation in 2002 as being one of the second wave of Axis of Evil states, a powerful irritant for Bashar. For amid a sudden thawing of relations with Syria that will see Foreign Secretary David Miliband meet Bashar in Damascus this week - having already been courted by French President Nicolas Sarkozy - Syria will argue that far from having to move in its positions, what it always predicted has come true. As the ‘War on Terror’ has faltered, and the George W Bush era wound down, the world has been forced to turn back to Syria - and not vice versa. Back to a country where secret policeman follow you or stand watching at the street corners; and where as recently as last month the regime sentenced a dozen democracy activists to two and a half years in prison.

Yet the disconnect between the two Bashars remains, demanding an answer to the question - who is the real Bashar? Is he the accessible and visible President with his pretty young wife, who goes to the theatre, opera and cinema, in contrast with a father rarely seen outside of official events? Who dines in the restaurants of Damascus with his family and likes music and would like, as he once said, to improve his people’s lives with ‘the tool of democracy’? Or is he his father’s son: a leader surrounded by a tiny circle of family advisers - including his brother-in-law Asef Shawkat, husband of his elder sister Bushra - who is ruthless and astute, a great dissimulator capable of playing, and winning, a long game?

The reality is that there are no easy answers in a state that remains so secretive, and where the centre of power is so remote for most, confined to a handful of people. The result is that the majority of efforts at assessing the character of Bashar Assad - and his country’s trajectory - have devolved into a kind of Syrian-style ‘Kremlinology’, as much based on inference as hard facts based on a solid knowledge of the man. Emerging from this fog have been theories - one of which claims that Bushra and Asef Shawkat are the real powers in Damascus.

‘I think if you look at Bashar’s situation, he has inherited a lot of baggage from his father, Hafez,’ says one person who has worked with the family since not long after Bashar came to power, who is sympathetic to Bashar ‘irrespective of the dark recesses’. ‘I believe that what he has been trying to do is legitimise his presidency, not simply rely on what his father put in motion. I think he is playing a long game - and I do believe he can conceive of a future where he is no longer in power.’

But to what end? ‘If you look at what the First Lady is trying to do [in her social activism],’ he adds, ’she makes it clear that it is in pursuit of the President’s vision. The problem is that no one knows precisely what that vision is.’

So it is most often to his father that Bashar is inevitably compared in attempting to understand the paradox of his rule. Thirty years in power, Hafez Assad built up a cult of personality around his rule that stood atop layers of loyalties constructed in the state’s rival centres of power. Brutal when it was required - not least in the slaughter of up to 20,000 during the Islamist uprising led by the Muslim Brotherhood in 1982 in the city of Hama - Hafez was also capable of a far more nuanced authoritarianism than neighbouring Iraq under Saddam, carefully sidelining threats to his rule.

With the death of his brother Basil in 1994, it was Bashar - who had trained to be an opthamologist in London, where he perfected his excellent English - who became his father’s political heir. What followed Hafez’s death in 2000 was a seamless transition that has been described as marking the emergence of the ‘first Arab republican hereditary regime’. The Damascus Spring that came after his confirmation as President by referendum was a short-lived experiment, the highpoint of which was the shutting down of Mezze prison and the release of hundreds of political prisoners. All that remains from those days is his request that the media not call him ‘immortal leader’.

But whether or not Bashar was serious in talking of liberalising Syria, the circumstances of his coming to power - shortly before 9/11 and the start of the ‘War on Terror’ - has been defining his rule so far. It was a conflict, he accurately predicted to The Observer a few months before the invasion of Iraq, that would lead to a quick victory in the first instance but subsequent chaos. Even Bashar could not have predicted the huge flow of Iraqi refugees that would head for his country, fleeing the consequences of the US war with the insurgency and sectarian violence. Since then Bashar has charted an oddly seesawing relationship with the US. He made Syria’s prisons available for torture of terrorist suspects at America’s behest - until the invasion of Iraq, that is - then with that war, flip-flopped.

The explanation is as much about how Syria sees itself as it is about Bashar. Despite its history of impoverishment, it conceives itself as an important regional player. It hosts Hamas and other anti-Israeli groups’ offices as much to remind the world that peace with Israel is impossible while Syria is ignored. Its own history of long being interfered in by its Arab neighbours, prior to Hafez’s rise, has resulted in a policy of interference in its neighbours’ affairs - including allegations that jihadis returning from the war in Iraq are targeted by Syria’s intelligence services as assets, before being allowed to return.

Syria also - encouraged by Bashar - sees itself as the ‘capital of Arab resistance’. According to Abdel Halim Khaddam, Syria’s former Vice President, now involved with the opposition National Salvation Front, who was recently interviewed in Brussels for the New Republic, it is an issue of national cohesion. ‘Fighting the Americans in Iraq is very dangerous. But it also makes Bashar popular. Under the banner of resistance, anything is popular.’

The necessity of such a policy - as well as the equally popular financial and logistical support for Hizbollah in the Israeli-Lebanon war of 2006 - is the existence of a fundamental contradiction in Bashar’s expressed but little acted on desires for an economically and politically reformed Syria, a consequence of which some believe would be the collapse of his regime, dominated as it is by the minority Alawite Shia sub-sect.

Reem Alaf, an associate fellow at Chatham House - and Syrian herself - believes that the result of the latest diplomacy to engage with Syria has been that Assad’s strategy has been shown to have worked in the long run. And while she believes that many Syrians are unhappy because Bashar Assad did not turn out to be more like King Abdullah of Jordan or President Mubarak of Egypt, Bashar is able to tap into a popularity born from a coincidence of agendas. ‘Syria is unique because both the regime and the people are concerned with the same issues: they agree over the Arab-Israeli conflict; they agree in supporting the Palestinians; they agree over the Anglo-US invasion of Iraq. I don’t know how you measure popularity, but in that sense he is supported.’

She is dubious, too, about the claims that others are more powerful than Bashar. ‘He runs everything, although there is not one person in charge for everything within his circle. It is one for all. There is no weak link.’

The Assad Lowdown

Born: Bashar Assad, 11 September 1965, in Damascus.

Best of times: Marriage to Asma (Emma) Akhras and birth of his three children. He has made a point of building up his wife’s social projects - particularly with the young - as a foil for criticism of the regime, with her role modelled on those of the First Ladies of Jordan and Morocco.

Worst of times: The assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in February 2005, in which his circle was accused of complicity. Bashar Assad himself twice refused to be interviewed in the subsequent UN investigation before finally complying, and has denied involvement. The murder led to the withdrawal of Syrian troops and agents from neighbouring Lebanon, following international pressure.

What he says: ‘When our interests have matched, the Americans have been good to us. When the interests have differed, they wanted us to mould ourselves to them, which we refused.’

What others say: ‘If we do not talk with [Bashar] Assad, there will not be peace in the Middle East.’ President Nicolas Sarkozy to President Shimon Peres during a visit to Israel.

The Times (GB): Barack Obama links Israel peace plan to 1967…
2008-11-16 05:23:17.340 GMT

……Peres was loudly applauded for telling King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, who was behind the original initiative: “I wish that your voice will become the prevailing voice of the whole region, of all people.”

A bipartisan group of senior foreign policy advisers urged Obama to give the Arab plan top priority immediately after his election victory. They included Lee Hamilton, the former co-chairman of the Iraq Study Group, and Zbigniew Brzezinski, a Democrat former national security adviser. Brzezinski will give an address tomorrow at Chatham House, the international relations think tank, in London.

Brent Scowcroft, a Republican former national security adviser, joined in the appeal. He said last week that the Middle East was the most troublesome area in the world and that an early start to the Palestinian peace process was “a way to psychologically change the mood of the region”.

Advisers believe the diplomatic climate favours a deal as Arab League countries are under pressure from radical Islamic movements and a potentially nuclear Iran. Polls show that Palestinians and Israelis are in a mood to compromise.

The advisers have told Obama he should lose no time in pursuing the policy in the first six to 12 months in office while he enjoys maximum goodwill.

Obama is also looking to break a diplomatic deadlock over Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons technology. A possible way forward, suggested last spring by Dennis Ross, a senior Obama adviser and former Middle East envoy, would be to persuade Russia to join in tough economic sanctions against Iran by offering to modify the US plan for a “missile shield” in eastern Europe.

President Dmitry Medvedev signalled that Russia could cancel a tit-for-tat deployment of missiles close to the Polish border if America gave up its proposed missile defences in Poland and the Czech Republic.

Ross argued in a paper on How to Talk to Iran that “if the Iranian threat goes away, so does the principal need to deploy these [antimissile] forces. [Vladimir] Putin [the Russian prime minister] has made this such a symbolic issue that this trade-off could be portrayed as a great victory for him”.

Ross and Daniel Kurtzer, a former American ambassador to Israel, accompanied Obama on a visit to Israel last July. They also travelled to Ramallah, where Obama questioned Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian leader, about the prospects for the Arab plan.

According to a Washington source Obama told Abbas: “The Israelis would be crazy not to accept this initiative. It would give them peace with the Muslim world from Indonesia to Morocco.”

Kurtzer submitted a paper to Obama on the question before this month’s presidential elections. He argued that trying to reach bilateral peace agreements between Israel and individual countries in the Middle East, was a recipe for failure as the record of Bill Clinton and George W Bush showed. In contrast, the broader Arab plan “had a lot of appeal”. A leading Democratic expert on the Middle East said: “There’s not a lot of meat on the bones yet, but it offers recognition of Israel across the Arab world.”

Livni, the leader of Kadima, which favours the plan, is the front-runner in Israeli elections due in February. Her rival, Benjamin Netanyahu, the leader of Likud, is adamantly against withdrawing to borders that predate the Six Day war in 1967.

Ehud Olmert, the prime minister, last week expressed his support for Israel’s withdrawal from the West Bank Golan and east Jerusalem.

Iraq assures Syria on US raids
Sat, 15 Nov 2008 02:30:12 GMT

Syria’s Ambassador to the UN Bashar Ja’afari
Damascus has said that Baghdad in a message has assured Syria that US forces will not use Iraqi soil to carry out attacks into Syrian territory.

Syria’s Ambassador to the UN Bashar Ja’afari said on Friday that Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari delivered the message to Syrian President Bashar Assad at a meeting in Damascus this week.

Ja’afari said that Syria is still not satisfied by the “American promise that this aggression will not be repeated.”

On the 26 of October, US commandoes in four helicopters attacked the Syrian village of al-Sukkariya some eight kilometers from the Iraqi border at about 5:45 pm local time (1445 GMT). The assault, which was carried out from inside Iraq, took nine civilian lives and inflicted injuries upon 14 others.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon also expressed in a report to the Security Council this week his “deep regret over the loss of civilian lives” because of the US attack on a house in the Syrian village of al- Sukkariya.