US President George W. Bush called on Syria Sunday to hand over the Iraqi leaders his government believes it is sheltering. Speaking to reporters outside the White House, the president also repeated his belief that Syria possesses chemical weapons.
He did not explicitly threaten military action against the Damas-cus government, saying that "each situation will require a different response," but nor did he rule it out.
PHOTO: REUTERS
"First things first. We're in Iraq now," he said. "Syria just needs to cooperate with the United States and our coalition partners, not harbor any Baathists, any military officials, any people who need to be held to account."
The Syrian deputy ambassador in Washington, Imad Moustapha, denied that his country was harboring escaped Iraqis. He said it was the responsibility of US troops to monitor Iraq's border with Syria.
In Damascus, facing the accusations by US officials that it had weapons of mass destruction and was sheltering Iraqi leaders, Syria's president held talks yesterday with British and Saudi envoys while the Syrian Foreign Ministry flatly denied the American charges.
"Of course Syria has no chemical weapons. They [Americans] have been talking for years about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. But so far, the presence of these weapons has not been confirmed," said Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Bouthayna Shaaban.
"I would like to say that there are biological, chemical and nuclear weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East region. They are in Israel, not in Syria," she said in a telephone interview with Lebanese TV.
The Pentagon's allegation that Saddam Hussein's lieutenants have been offered a haven by Damascus met with scepticism from some US intelligence officials last week. One said there was no "validated intelligence" for such a claim.
But the defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, said there was "no question" that Syria was harboring senior Iraqi officials.
Asked how Washington would respond if Saddam himself were found being sheltered by Syria, Rumsfeld said, "The last thing I would do would be to discuss that."
But he said Damascus was "making a lot of bad mistakes, a lot of bad judgments in my view".
Rumsfeld said "busloads" of fighters had been crossing from Syria into Iraq to attack US troops.
"Some were stopped, the ones we could find we turned around and sent them back. Some we [put in] prisoner of war camps. And others are getting killed."
Top British officials said yesterday Washington and London had no plans to invade Syria, but Damascus had "important questions" to answer about its own weapons programs.
"As far as `Syria next on the list,' we made clear that it is not," Foreign Secretary Jack Straw told reporters in Bahrain, his first stop in a Gulf Arab tour that will also take him to Kuwait, Qatar and Saudi Arabia.
"There is no next list," he said.
In Jerusalem, Israel added to US pressure on Syria to change its ways yesterday, publicizing a list of demands that included the removal of Syrian-backed Hezbollah guerrillas from southern Lebanon.
"We have a long list of issues that we are thinking of demanding of the Syrians, and it is proper that it should be done through the Americans," Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz told Israel's Maariv daily.
"It starts from removing the Hezbollah threat from southern Lebanon," he said, calling for the dismantling of the group whose daily attacks on Israeli forces in a cross-border zone occupied since 1978 led to their withdrawal in 2000.
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