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JORDAN: THE US economic sanctions on Syria are a step away from US military action
on the middle eastern country, a US congressman said here during a conference
on reform in the Arab world. “Sanctions are one step below a military confrontation,
and sanctions are preferable to military confrontation, frankly,” said US
Rep. Christopher Shays, a Republican from Connecticut.
Mr Shays, speaking on Saturday in a panel discussion at the World Economic
Forum, was asked by an audience member to explain the rationale behind the US
government’s tough economic penalties imposed on Damascus. US President
George W. Bush levied the sanctions in May ‘04, signing Congressional
legislation passed in ‘03.
The audience member, who described herself as a Syrian lawyer, said Syria is
a tolerant country with a large Christian population. The country has become
a safe haven for Iraqi’s fleeing a grinding guerrilla war, especially
Christians escaping anti-Christian violence that has wracked Iraq in the wake
of the US-led invasion.
The Syrian woman said the US sanctions were a rash escalation of a dispute
that had not seen sufficient diplomacy. She said the Syrian people were suffering
as a result. “In any policy there is carrot and stick,” the woman
said. “But between the United States and Syria there is only the stick.”
Mr Shays said bluntly that the United States has “huge problems”
with Syria. He said he attended the funeral of a US soldier killed in Iraq while
fighting insurgents near the Syrian border. Mr Shays suggested that the soldier
was killed because Damascus had failed to halt anti-US insurgents from crossing
into Iraq.
“Sanctions are hurting ordinary people, and we agree with that,”
Shays said. “We’re trying to get the attention of Syria and we want
to have changes. We don’t want to tell them the things we think are wrong.
We just want them to stop.” Syrian officials have said they are doing
all they can to close the country’s long and remote border with Iraq and
suggested the number of infiltrators is small.
US military sources in Iraq have long downplayed the role of foreign fighters
in Iraq, saying they form a tiny percentage of an overwhelmingly Iraqi insurgency.
Mr Shays and another US congressman, Sen. Gordon Smith, said that America’s
top commitment in the region is to Israel.
“We are Israel’s strong ally,” Mr Shays said in an interview
with The Associated Press. “It would be foolish for people to think that
somehow we are neutral.”
