The speaker of the Unitd States House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, delivered a powerful challenge to the Bush administration’s stewardship of US interests in the Middle East by breaking with its policy of isolating Syria and holding talks in Damascus with President Bashar Assad.
Wednesday’s visit defied warnings from President George Bush about sending ”mixed signals” to Damascus, and was widely seen as a sign of growing determination from a Democratic Congress to have a hand in setting US foreign policy.
”We come in friendship, hope, and determined that the road to Damascus is a road to peace,” Pelosi told reporters before travelling on from Syria to Saudi Arabia.
However, her foray into diplomacy stumbled when she told reporters that she was relaying a message of peace to President Assad from the Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert. ”[Our] meeting with the president enabled us to communicate a message from Prime Minister Olmert that Israel was ready to engage in peace talks,” she told reporters after her talks with Assad.
Hours later, Olmert’s office issued a statement on its website saying that Israel remained unconvinced that Assad was interested in a peace process. ”The prime minister emphasised that although Israel is interested in peace with Syria, that country continues to be part of the axis of evil and a force that encourages terror in the entire Middle East,” the statement said, adding that Israeli policy remained unchanged.
Pelosi’s status as the third most senior elected figure in Washington makes her visit to Damascus the most serious challenge to the Bush administration strategy of isolation in four years. In a further sign of Syria’s re-emergence on the international stage, three Republican congressmen made a separate visit to Damascus this week.
”This is only the beginning of our constructive dialogue with Syria and we hope to build on this visit,” said Tom Lantos, the chairperson of the house committee on foreign affairs, who accompanied Pelosi.
In her talks Pelosi said she pressed Assad on his support for Hezbollah and Hamas. She also raised the issue of last summer’s kidnapping of Israeli troops by the militant groups.
The US Vice-President, Dick Cheney, accused Pelosi of undermining Washington’s policy of isolation and of rewarding Syria for what he called bad behaviour. ”Without him having done any of those things he should do in order to be acceptable, he gets a visit from a high-ranking American anyway. In other words, his bad behaviour is being rewarded,” Cheney told ABC radio.
Washington considers Syria a sponsor of terror, because of its links with Hamas and Hezbollah, and relations worsened even further in 2005, amid suspicions of a Syrian role in the assassination of the Lebanese leader Rafik Hariri.
But behind the scenes the picture is more complicated. An assistant US secretary of state, Ellen Sauerbrey, met Syrian officials in Damascus last month to discuss the flight of Iraqi refugees, and Mr Bush has sanctioned the presence of US diplomats at a regional meeting on Iraqi security, attended by Syria and Iran. – Guardian Unlimited Â