Archive for the ‘Syria’ Category
The Bush administration has stated that North Korea was in kahoots with Syria in an effort to build a nuclear reactor in Syria. (although they won’t comment on it) They have pictures to prove it. (Where have we heard that before?) Israel, who destroyed the facility last September, was upset that the CIA was going to provide information regarding the claims to the U.S. congress this week, fearing “top secrets” may be divulged. Here’s something that’s not so top secret. In bombing the facility, Israel has pissed off the IAEA and in not providing the video and images to the IAEA until yesterday, the U.S. has pissed them off, too.
The UN’s nuclear chief today criticised the US for the delay in publishing what Washington claims is proof that a Syrian nuclear reactor was built with help from North Korea.
Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, was briefed yesterday by the US under’secretary of state for arms control, shortly before the director of the CIA, Michael Hayden, briefed members of Senate and House committees on the same intelligence.
“The director general deplores the fact that this information was not provided to the agency in a timely manner, in accordance with the agency’s responsibilities under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, to enable it to verify its veracity and establish the facts,” ElBaradei said in a statement today.
He was critical of Israel’s bombing of the site of the alleged reactor. “The director general views the unilateral use of force by Israel as undermining the due process of verification that is at the heart of the nonproliferation regime,” the statement said.
Some democrats in congress aren’t too happy it took so long to present this inforamtion, and there is widespread skeptism of the claims the U.S. has laid out. Being that the facility has been destroyed, the IAEA cannot see for itself if there were nuclear activities taking place there. Syria denies the claims, saying this fabrication is proof of what a failure the CIA and this U.S. administration is. They have nothing to hide and will fully cooperate with the IAEA investigation.
Glenn Greenwald takes a look at the situation, questioning it’s validity, also.
Aren’t you just sick of this shit?
Looking for trouble……..
Syria ridiculed Saturday Washington’s dispatch of the USS Cole and two other vessels to waters off Lebanon as a “losing bet,” and said Washington was unable to impose its solution to Lebanon’s long-running political crisis by force, reports CBS News producer George Baghdadi in Damascus.
“There is a history of U.S. interventions in Lebanon. I think all those experiments were totally useless. I would tell those Lebanese who are betting on U.S. show of strength force that this is a losing bet. America cannot impose a solution in Lebanon as it sees it,” Syrian Foreign Minister Waleed Moallem told reporters in the first official reaction to the U.S. move.
“The only solution comes within the framework of the Arab initiative … and Lebanese consensus,” said Moallem, who was speaking at a joint press conference with Arab League chief Amr Moussa.
Moussa was in Damascus Saturday to discuss with Syrian officials the Lebanese crisis, as well as an Arab summit to be held in Damascus at the end of this month.
More at CBS2Chicago
Still not sure what happened here. Was there a nuclear facility? Things are not what they seem….or what they’d like us to believe.
The UN nuclear watchdog stated Monday it had no information about any “undeclared nuclear facility in Syria” and it was investigating media reports that such a site had been the target of an Israeli air strike last month. The International Atomic Energy Agency “has no information about any undeclared nuclear facility in Syria and no information about recent reports,” spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said, according to AFP.
“We would obviously investigate any relevant information coming our way. The IAEA Secretariat expects any country having information about nuclear-related activities in another country to provide that information to the IAEA.”
The IAEA was “in contact with the Syrian authorities to verify the authenticity of these reports,” Fleming added.
According to The New York Times, Israel bombed a site in Syria last month that Israeli and US intelligence believe was a partly built nuclear reactor possibly modeled after one in North Korea. Source
Juan Coles take on it:
The NYT has been pushing the story that the Israeli air strike on Syria on September 6 came in response to intelligence that Syria was building a nuclear reactor at the site with clandestine North Korean help. There are reasons to question the accuracy of the Israeli story, which at some points has included allegations that there was evidence of enriched nuclear material at the site; such material could only be produced at the end of a long research and construction project, not at the beginning. The Israelis are trigger-happy and their intelligence on the Arab world is most often sloppy (the then head of Mossad is still insisting that Iraq had WMD), so one cannot assume there was anything to their apprehensions. In the absence of any inspection of the bombed site, one cannot assume there wasn’t, either. Some analysts think the site was just run of the mill anti-aircraft batteries newly bought from the Russians. The strike probably killed the November peace process summit that Condi Rice had been working toward; Syria says it won’t attend.
Retired CIA analyst of Arab affairs Ray Close tells us what he thinks about it all:
“This is my Monday morning (speculative) analysis of the mysterious Israeli air attack on Syria on September 6, 2007 . . :
Read more »
I read a very interesting theory about this airstrike a few weeks back. Here it is in a nutshell. Syria, according to this article, possesses the most crowded anti aircraft system in the world following its continued purchase of Russian weapon systems. Dayr az-Zawr, where the F15/16 attack took place, is not just a tip toe across the Syrian border. The Israelis would have had to fly deep into Syria to get there. And what happened with Syria’s super dooper anti aircraft system? Nothing. No evidence of enemy aircraft in Syrian airspace. The Israelis, with a little technical assistance from their good ole friends in the USA, were able to totally blind the Russian anti-aircraft system. Hence, the silence on the part of Syria when this happened. They thought they were totally protected and ended up naked. Also, this served as a warning to Iran as to what we’re capable of doing. Just a theory….. an interesting one.
Today this is the story:
The September Israeli airstrike on a suspected nuclear site in Syria had been in the works for months, ABC News has learned, and was delayed only at the strong urging of the United States.
In early July the Israelis presented the United States with satellite imagery that they said showed a nuclear facility in Syria. They had additional evidence that they said showed that some of the technology was supplied by North Korea.
Read more at ABCNews
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has said his government will not attend a Middle East peace conference unless Syria’s concerns are addressed.
President Assad told the BBC that this meant primarily the return of the Golan Heights, occupied by Israel since 1967.
Mr Assad said no opportunity for peace should be squandered, but he saw little of the substance needed for success in US plans for a conference in November.
The talks are intended to focus on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The US had said it would invite Syria, but only as a member of an Arab League committee dealing with the Israeli-Palestinian problem.
More at the BBC
I’m guessing there was no nuclear site. If there had been, don’t you think Bush would have been beating his chest and telling the world how big bad Syria, friend to big bad Iran, had set up a nuclear site but he saved the world? He absolutely refused to comment about this at his press conference yesterday. On the other hand, Syria isn’t talking about it either…..so who knows.
Israel’s decision to attack Syria on Sept. 6, bombing a suspected nuclear site set up in apparent collaboration with North Korea, came after Israel shared intelligence with President Bush this summer indicating that North Korean nuclear personnel were in Syria, U.S. government sources said.
The Bush administration has not commented on the Israeli raid or the underlying intelligence. Although the administration was deeply troubled by Israel’s assertion that North Korea was assisting the nuclear ambitions of a country closely linked with Iran, sources said, the White House opted against an immediate response because of concerns it would undermine long-running negotiations aimed at persuading North Korea to abandon its nuclear program.
Ultimately, however, the United States is believed to have provided Israel with some corroboration of the original intelligence before Israel proceeded with the raid, which hit the Syrian facility in the dead of night to minimize possible casualties, the sources said.
More at the Washington Post
Who to believe………?
IT was just after midnight when the 69th Squadron of Israeli F15Is crossed the Syrian coast-line. On the ground, Syria’s formidable air defences went dead. An audacious raid on a Syrian target 50 miles from the Iraqi border was under way.
At a rendezvous point on the ground, a Shaldag air force commando team was waiting to direct their laser beams at the target for the approaching jets. The team had arrived a day earlier, taking up position near a large underground depot. Soon the bunkers were in flames.
Ten days after the jets reached home, their mission was the focus of intense speculation this weekend amid claims that Israel believed it had destroyed a cache of nuclear materials from North Korea.
The Israeli government was not saying. “The security sources and IDF [Israeli Defence Forces] soldiers are demonstrating unusual courage,” said Ehud Olmert, the prime minister. “We naturally cannot always show the public our cards.”
Full article at the Times Online
When House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) led a bipartisan delegation to Syria earlier this month, several Republican lawmakers criticized her for undermining the President:
House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH): “She’s going for one reason and that is to embarrass the president.”
Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA): “The Speaker and many of her Democratic allies have become so drunk with grandiose visions of deposing Bush that they break bread with terrorists and enemies of the United States.”
Republican Rep. David Hobson (OH) was also on that trip. But in an interview published in the Washington Post today, he states that he never received any of the attacks that were thrown at Pelosi:
“Before we left, we met with the State Department people and nobody told us not to go,” Hobson said, adding that none of his Republican colleagues broached the subject, either. “Nobody ever called me to say, A-Why are you going to Syria with those people?-”
Despite his attacks on Pelosi, Boehner has repeatedly refused to criticize Hobson for going to Syria. His spokesman recently confirmed that “there’s no tension or hard feelings there whatsoever” between Boehner and Hobson over the trip. Similarly, the lawmakers who criticized Pelosi were silent on similar congressional trips led by fellow Republicans.
Hobson has also defended Pelosi against his colleagues- attacks, noting that she “did not engage in any bashing of Bush in any meeting I was in and she did not in any meeting I was in bash the policies as it relates to Syria.” He recently sent a box of chocolates to Pelosi to thank her for including him in the trip and said, “If asked, I would go again. I thought it was a good trip.”
Damascus, 6 March (AKI) - Venezuela’s foreign minister Nicolas Maduro is this week visiting Syria and Iran with the aim of firming up several bilateral projects, as Venezuela’s leftwing president Hugo Chavez continues to strengthen ties with the likeminded anti-American states. In meetings with Syria’s president Bashar al-Assad, Maduro will discuss a planned 1.5 billion dollar oil refinery to be built with Syrian, Venezuelan and Iranian capital, as well as other projects.
In cooperation with Syria, the Venezuelan government is also planning to build an olive oil and a textiles factory. A joint Syrian-Venezuelan commission will in May review progress on bilateral projects.
Al-Assad is due to make a “historic” visit to Venezuela in July, Venezuela’s foreign ministry announced. The trip is to “accelerate the development of several bilateral cooperation accords,” Bolivia’s state news agency reports.
Maduro will on Wednesday and Thursday attend a meeting of an VenDamascus, 6 March (AKI) - Venezuela’s foreign minister Nicolas Maduro is this week visiting Syria and Iran with the aim of firming up several bilateral projects, as Venezuela’s leftwing president Hugo Chavez continues to strengthen ties with the likeminded anti-American states. In meetings with Syria’s president Bashar al-Assad, Maduro will discuss a planned 1.5 billion dollar oil refinery to be built with Syrian, Venezuelan and Iranian capital, as well as other projects.
Read more at Global Research
DAMASCUS (AFP) - The United Nations has opened a tented school for some 90 Palestinian refugee children in the no-man’s land between Iraq and Syria.
The children are among 354 Palestinians who have been stranded at the border for nine months since fleeing sectarian violence in Iraq in which Palestinians are often targeted as suspected sympathisers of Sunni Arab insurgents.
The school’s eight teachers are drawn from among the refugees themselves and underwent a week-long training course in Damascus last month, the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) said Monday.
Read more at YahooNews
That is, if Bush believed in diplomacy…..which he doesn’t.
(CBS) The midnight bus delivers another load of war-weary Iraqis into Damascus. After an 18-hour ride, they’ve just joined one million Iraqis already there, seeking a haven from the violence at home, CBS News correspondent Elizabeth Palmer reports.
But it’s another group of Iraqis - using Syria as a base - who would prove key in ending the violence. Just days ago, more than 100 senior Iraqi Ba’athists met there just days ago with the backing of Syrian authorities.
They are former members of Saddam’s regime, many involved in organizing and financing the insurgency, whose attacks on both Iraqis and Americans have killed thousands.
But the Ba’athists now claim they are willing to trade this violence for political discussions, after secret meetings in Syria.
In an exclusive interview with CBS News, Syria’s Vice President Farouk al Shara says negotiations are the way forward.
“If they are flexible and if they really believe in the political process, then why not,” he says.
Read more at CBSNews
TEHRAN, Iran - Iran’s foreign ministry on Thursday summoned the Iraqi and Swiss envoys to Tehran over the detention of five Iranian staffers at a diplomatic mission in northern Iraq, state-run television reported.
The broadcast said the ministry had summoned the ambassadors and “demanded an explanation” about the incident. Switzerland represents American interests in Iran, where there is no U.S. embassy.
The summons followed an early morning raid in Iraq, where multinational forces stormed the building of an Iranian consulate in the Kurdish-controlled northern city of Irbil, 220 miles from Baghdad.
The troops detained the five staffers and confiscated computers and documents, according to local Kurdish officials in Irbil.
More here
Related: Iran/Syria respond to Bush’s plan
Russian anger over new US sanctions
 MOSCOW: Russia has accused the US of illegally imposing sanctions on some Russian military firms which Washington says were co-operating with Iran and Syria.
“This is not the first time by far the US resorts to illegal attempts to spread its internal legislation on foreign companies and force them to abide by the US rules,” Russia’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Saturday.
The Federal Register, a record of US policy actions, published a State Department notice on Friday listing 24 businesses - including four in Russia and others in China, Iran, Iraq, Malaysia, Mexico, North Korea, Sudan and Syria - that it said engaged in actions that triggered the sanctions.
The sanctions went into effect on December 28, the notice said, and will remain in place for two years unless the secretary of state lifts them.
The notice said the 24 incurred sanctions under the Iran and Syria Nonproliferation Act by providing materials that could contribute to the development of weapons of mass destruction or cruise or ballistic missile systems by Iran or Syria.
…
Moscow said the latest sanctions against its arms firms were groundless. “Once again the United States is embarking on this vicious circle,” the statement said.
Source: The Sydney Morning Herald
Maybe we should spend some time looking for the missing billions of U.S. dollars that were lost in Iraq, and that the Pentagon couldn’t account for. Oh wait……we probably already KNOW where that is.
The dictator is dead, and now the hunt for his illicit fortune is intensifying. Officials from the FBI and US Treasury are focusing their inquiries on £2.2bn of illegal oil profits
Jason Burke
Sunday December 31, 2006
The Observer
American and Iraqi government investigators tracing hundreds of millions of pounds missing from Saddam Hussein’s illicit fortune are hoping to question members of the former dictator’s close family.
Officials from the FBI, the American Treasury and the State Department particularly want to find £2.2bn in illegal profits that Saddam’s regime is alleged to have earned from 2000-2003 from an oil-for-trade pact signed with Syria that was outside the official United Nations administered oil-for-food programme, according to official documents released to a US congressional sub-committee.
State Department and Treasury officials claim that Syria has failed to account properly for more than $500m in Iraqi oil profits. The cash, deposited in Syria’s central bank, was paid to Syrian ‘businessmen’ after Saddam’s fall, sources say. Syrian officials deny the allegations, saying that visits by American officials to Damascus in the autumn of 2003 failed to uncover any evidence of the missing cash apart from $300m that has already been frozen.
More here
And then we have McCain and Lieberman telling Israel not to speak to Syria……. diplomacy abounds!!!!!!!
The Bush Administration has been quietly nurturing individuals and parties opposed to the Syrian government in an effort to undermine the regime of President Bashar Assad. Parts of the scheme are outlined in a classified, two-page document which says that the U.S. already is “supporting regular meetings of internal and diaspora Syrian activists” in Europe. The document bluntly expresses the hope that “these meetings will facilitate a more coherent strategy and plan of actions for all anti-Assad activists.”
The document says that Syria’s legislative elections, scheduled for March 2007, “provide a potentially galvanizing issue for… critics of the Assad regime.” To capitalize on that opportunity, the document proposes a secret “election monitoring” scheme, in which “internet accessible materials will be available for printing and dissemination by activists inside the country [Syria] and neighboring countries.” The proposal also calls for surreptitiously giving money to at least one Syrian politician who, according to the document, intends to run in the election. The effort would also include “voter education campaigns” and public opinion polling, with the first poll “tentatively scheduled in early 2007.”
Read more at CNN
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