Syria has called on the United States to pull its troops out of Iraq, saying their presence has led to chaos and terrorism, according to remarks published on Wednesday.
”When America entered Iraq, there was no terrorism problem. Now, there is the problem of terrorism and of al-Qaeda,” Syrian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Bushra Kanafani said in an interview with the London-based Saudi newspaper Asharq al-Awsat.
Leaders of al-Qaeda, accused in the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, have called on Muslim militants to strike Americans in Iraq. US officials, however, say there is no firm evidence the terror network is organising an insurgency in Iraq.
America has repeatedly accused Syria, long on the US State Department list of countries sponsoring terrorism and an opponent of the US-led invasion of Iraq, of not doing enough to ensure Muslim militants do not slip across its border into Iraq. Syrian officials say the long, porous border makes it hard to stop infiltrators.
”The problem here is not Syria, but America,” Kanafani was quoted as telling the newspaper.
Kanafani said the United States can help restore order if it accepts a timetable for withdrawing its troops from IRaq and allows a greater peacekeeping role for the United Nations. Others, she said, ”can behave in a way more acceptable to Iraqis and bring Iraq closer to regaining its sovereignty and holding free elections that
lead to an elected Iraqi government and then the problems will end.”
Syrian President Bashar Assad has also blamed the US-led occupation for instability in Iraq.
”The world has discovered that the war of ‘liberation’ of Iraq has liberated the Iraqi citizen of the state, the institutions, sovereignty, dignity, food, water and electricity,” Assad said in a speech at the Organisation of the Islamic Conference summit in
Malaysia last month.
”The Iraqi citizen has become ‘liberated’ from the gift of life, and everyone, without exception, has discovered that the excuses which led to war lacked credibility,” Assad said, referring to the US-led coalition’s failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
In addition to Iraq, Syrian-US ties have been strained over Syrian support for anti-Israeli militant Palestinian groups based in Damascus and for the Lebanese Hezbollah group, which Washington labels terrorist organisations.
Kanafani told Asharq al-Awsat she was not optimistic about an early improvement in US-Syrian ties. – Sapa-AP