Instead the administration expects that the loss of income from smuggling arms and oil to and from Iraq will make Damascus vulnerable to economic pressure. Congress is examining the Syrian accountability act, which would impose tough sanctions on Damascus.
British officials confirm they share US alarm about Syria's recent conduct and its sponsorship role in Palestinian terrorism. But Blair has cultivated Bashar al-Assad, its British-educated president, and adopts a more conciliatory tone towards Damascus.
"It's a bit of a good cop, bad cop routine," one Whitehall official said of the tougher line coming from the US. The prime minister's upbeat report to MPs on what, for the first time, he called victory in the three-week Iraq war was marred by skeptical challenges from both sides based on reports from Washington that hawks within the Bush administration want to move on the Baathist regime next door.
Evidently exasperated, Blair denounced "conspiracy theories" and insisted that he could not be clearer about his determination to tackle Syria by diplomacy.
His remarks came hours after the foreign secretary, Jack Straw, warned President Assad that he would have to face up to "the new reality" of the post-Saddam world. Speaking in Kuwait on the second leg of a four-country tour of the Gulf, Straw said: "There are a number of questions it is very important that Syria should answer and in a cooperative way."
His tough remarks were echoed by the defense secretary, Geoff Hoon, who warned that Britain had concerns for some time about Syria's desire to develop weapons of mass destruction.
Hoon referred to a government paper, presented to parliament in February last year, which raised questions about Syria's weapons program. The document said that Syria was one of five countries attempting to "obtain inventories of longer-range ballistic missiles". The other countries included North Korea, Iran, Iraq and Libya.
The Syrian ambassador to London angrily rejected suggestions that Damascus had any weapons of mass destruction or was harboring members of Saddam's regime. Mouafak Nassar told Radio 4's The World at One: "I will say I am wondering why they are targeting one Arab country after the other. They are ignoring totally the country that has mass destruction weapons -- Israel."
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