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December 1, 2003 EXCERPTS Key Passages From Interview With Syria's President AMASCUS, Syria, Nov. 30 — Following are key passages from an interview on Sunday with President Bashar al-Assad of Syria. The president's office transcribed and translated the interview, in which Mr. Assad spoke in English and Arabic. About the Golan Heights Some people say there are Syrian conditions, and my answer is no; we don't have Syrian conditions. What Syria says is this: negotiations should be resumed from the point at which they had stopped simply because we have achieved a great deal in these negotiations. If we don't say this, it means we want to go back to point zero in the peace process. This would also mean wasting a lot more time, and every day we waste more people are being killed and more violence erupts in the region. On the Situation in Iraq The first point I'd like to stress is that all what I said to Americans, whether the American officials or through our statements before and during the war, turned out now to be true. In fact things are even going worse than Syria expected. So, what we fear is already there, and now there is an escalating trend of terrorism that neither our neighbors nor we are able to control. There is also an armament smuggling among countries. There is also no side in Iraq with whom you can agree on any procedures or measures. Therefore, I think the solution in Iraq is to allow the Iraqis to write their own constitution and to elect their own government. What we hear from the Iraqis is that they want elections at the level of people, while the American point of view is that the interim government should draw the constitution; whether it's an interim or permanent constitution I don't know, but this is what the Americans are calling for. And I think that if this is done, it's going to be one of the reasons for chaos in the future in Iraq. That's why we believe that those who are going to draft the constitution should be elected by the Iraqi people, and this is an Iraqi proposal and not a Syrian one. On a Syrian Role in Iraq We asked the Iraqis who visited us about this point. They said to us categorically and absolutely clearly that we do not want any military role for any country in the world, and any forces that will enter into Iraq whether they are foreign or Arab forces will be treated as the enemy. On Iraq as a Model I hope we can make better steps toward democracy in our country, but that takes time. But no one in Syria, or may be in the region if I want to exaggerate a little bit, asks for help from any country to have his own democracy. I think before the war on Iraq some thought about this, but after the war they changed their minds. Only a little percentage of people used to think before the war that the war on Iraq would help democracy in the region. Most of them now think this is a bad example of bringing democracy. On Israel's Influence As I said Syrian-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. NEW YORK (Reuters) - Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, in an interview with The New York Times on Monday, appealed to the United States to use its influence to revive talks between his country and Israel. The Syrian president called the absence of diplomacy a gaping hole in President Bush's strategy for the Middle East, according to the report. He said details of returning the Golan Heights to Syria in return for security guarantees to Israel were 80 percent complete a few months before he succeeded his late father as Syria's president, according to the paper. But he told The Times that the White House, focused on Iraq and the Palestinians, has shown little interest in this diplomatic area and that neglecting the Syrian-Israel dispute showed how the U.S. preaches about visionary change in the region but fails to adopt practical measures to attain it. "You cannot just keep talking about this vision; you have to put a mechanism in order to achieve that vision," he said, speaking to the Times in Damascus. The Syrian president talked with a generally conciliatory tone toward the United States, stressing that the poor U.S. image in the Arab world could be overcome, and that Syria did not regard the United States as an adversary, the newspaper said. |
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