The President of Just and Comprehensive Peace

Syrian-US Relations

Q - How do you see the new U.S. Administration?

"There haven’t been any contact with it yet; we have no information,"

Q - What do you expect from President Bush?

"We expect what we want… neutrality in peace process, efficiency in implementing UN Security Council resolutions and pushing the Israelis to give back all Arab rights."

"I think if the American Administration is able to formulate one opinion, then they can probably have cooperation with Europe but you need first to have one opinion. This is what I have said to William Burns, the Assistant Secretary of the United States when he visited me in Damascus two months ago. I said to him: you are a group of administrations, not just one administration. And I said to him: each one of your administrations has a different opinion . So, I think that Europe has to choose one of these administrations to deal with."

"American relations for some reason fluctuate in different periods of time. Whenever the Syrian relations deteriorated with United States, invariably, it was the Israeli factor that caused that deterioration. What do I mean by the Israeli factor? It could be Israeli influence or effect in the United States through the lobby, or it could be the complete biased attitude of the Americans toward the Israeli government. In fact if you take the Israeli element out of the picture, I cannot see the difference between Syria and the U.S.; there are no differences between Syria and the United States about what we want to achieve in the region."

"We have no problem with the United States, we are neither for or against the United States."

"As regard US sanctions on Syria and Syria-US current and future relations, the President said that such sanctions are a new form of international relations which yields hegemony and interference in a country’s internal affairs. Such a principle is rejected and most states announced their rejection of the sanctions. But the world is influenced and no state lives isolation. So, sanctions can have impacts and it is not yet known whether these impacts are great or otherwise. The Americans are trying to convert the impacts from moral ones into economic and financial ones. We are still maintaining dialogue with the Americans. ‏ On the other hand, the Syrian-US relations are always changing. They were severed in the 1960s and were restored in 1974 when President Nixon visited Syria. Throughout the past 30 years, relations were not stable. Sometimes we reach agreement and at other times we differ due to changes in the American Administration. However, the only thing that remains is dialogue and we hope that by so doing relations can be positive and we hope they become more stable. ‏ We want relations to be stable, but till now they are unstable."

"Until now , dialogue is still the basis. This does not mean the relation is good . It changes continuously and every day. And it differs between one trend and another inside the US. Administration . There are trends that we have the desire to make dialogue with. These trends believe that dialogue with us is important for a number of reasons that are related to the issues of the region in general , and to Syria's role in particular . We cannot specify things now precisely , particularly that the US. administration has gone into election stage and everything in the US is now governed by elections. Many persons told us they were not convinced when they had voted for Syria's Accountability Act. But , they added , they did this out of their electoral interests which motivated them to vote for it. This is known about the United States. Some of them are members of the Congress .But dialogue is still going on.

"When Collin Powell came in 2003 and talked to us about controlling the borders, we said that we could not, and this has been a chronic problem. In principle, no country can control its borders. Big trucks used to enter Syria undetected, so how do you want Syria to control the passage of individuals? At any rate, if you are so concerned about this problem, we accept any technology that could help us in this area. Of course they have not provided anything. Many American delegations came and talked to us about the same issue. They used to start by saying the United States cannot control its borders with Mexico, and end up by saying that Syria has to control its borders with Iraq. This means that a super-power cannot control its borders and we can. Iraqi delegations came and talked with the same logic; and there were unfounded accusations. We told our Iraqi brothers that we were prepared to cooperate in that regard. We told all these parties that regardless of the American demand, and regardless of any pressure, we have an interest in controlling our borders, because the chaos in Iraq had a direct impact on the security situation in Syria. So, we have an interest, but cooperation requires two parties. Shall we cooperate with ourselves on both sides of the border? We are on one side of the border, and there has to be cooperation on the other side, whether on the part of the Americans or the Iraqis. We stress again today that we are open without limits to cooperation with our Iraqi brothers, whether for controlling the borders directly or what lies beyond the borders, through security cooperation and other measures. The strange thing is that the American accusations after the invasion and until the middle of 2004 were about what they called them Jihadis or Salafis or fundamentalists or Islamic terrorists. Suddenly these became Baathists and followers of Sadam Husein. This shows the state of confusion and the psychological pressure on the occupation forces. "

"I wouldn't say this is true- US accusations rearding the Syria-Iraq borders-. It's completely wrong. You have an aspect of the problem. The first aspect is no country can control his borders completely. And example is the border between the United States and Mexico. And many American officials told me: "We cannot control our border with Mexico." But at the end, they end up saying: "You should control your border with Iraq." This is impossible, and I told Mr. Powell that for the first time we met after the war. I told him: "It's impossible to control the border." And we asked for some technical support, but we did many steps to control our border, as I said, not completely, but we did many steps. And we'd like to invite any delegation from the world or from the United States to come and see our borders to see the steps that we took, and to look at the other side to see nothing. There is nobody on the other side, American or Iraqi."

"They have to understand me by understanding my culture as a person. If they want to understand me as a president, they have to understand whom I represent; and this is related to the culture of my people. So, this the problem with the west: If I want to make an analogy to two computers with different systems – if we talk about windows – we notice that they do the same job but they have different systems. So, you have sometimes some software to make the translation between the two systems. We do not have to talk about the events; we have to explain and analyze these events and translate them from our culture to another culture. That is what we want from the media in your country and from the politicians. That is how they can understand, and then they will understand that we need peace, we need prosperity and we need reform."

From HE’s PBS TV Interview

"When you don't understand the culture, you don't understand the politics, especially in our region. If you don't understand the culture and the politics, you don't understand what decision we take as leaders and why, and what we say and why. That is why we always have misunderstandings when we conduct a dialogue with many delegations coming from the West, especially the United States. They ask us questions that show how they misunderstand our vision and our beliefs and goals."

From HE’s PBS TV Interview

"First of all, as American officials you have to talk with me about your interests, and as a Syrian official I have to talk with you about my interests. If you ask them about Iraq they would say, "we want stability, we want to support the political process, and we won’t stay in Iraq," and in Syria we want stability, support the political process and don’t want to see any foreign troops there. So, we share the same titles with the Americans, and that is why we can find common interests. Exactly, but we should take into consideration our interests. The problem with this administration is that they talk of their interests only and don’t talk of the interests of other countries. This problem is not only with Syria but also with many countries. But if you talk about the end results, they haven’t achieved their own interests. Four years after the 9/11 events what has the world achieved? Did it achieve any better? I cannot see that. They have to deal with the facts instead of wasting time discussing wishful thinking and titles and slogans."

From HE’s PBS TV Interview

"First of all, they have to stop looking for scapegoats and whipping boys, this administration. And there's a logical answer: We cannot stoke the fire and then extinguish it. If you stoke it, it will burn you. So if we have this chaos in Iraq, it will spill over to Syria and to other countries, so saying this, like saying that the Syrian government is working against the Syrian interest, this is impossible."

" This administration, in general, are not interested in peace at all. This administration is not willing to achieve peace. They don't have the will, and they don't have the vision. This is, in brief, what I know about this administration not about the president in particular. "

Q: And is there anyone operating on the world stage today that you admire? Any leader, any diplomat?

"Maybe Bush, the father, because of his will to achieve the peace in the region. Of course, President Clinton, he has the same will, and he is admired in our region and respected. "

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