Media Reaction: Syria;Dhaka

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SUBJECT: Media Reaction: Syria;Dhaka


Summary: A columnist of the Daily Star says that the blatant
manner in which president Bush is exploiting Hariri's
assassination leaves no doubt that he regards it as an
opportunity for him to act as judge, jury and executioner.

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Syria
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"Syria: In The Line of Fire"
English daily "The Daily Star" op-ed opines (03/14/05):
Henry Kissinger had once famously remarked that there
couldn't be a war in the Middle East without Egypt and no
peace without Syria. When in the wake of Oslo process -- and
Madrid Peace Conference before that -- Israel's Arab
neighbors fell in line with the US-Israeli designs one after
another, Syria stood defiant to the fake peace process
initiated and brokered by Israel's western patrons led by
the United States. It was obviously a disappointment for a
sullen superpower intoxicated with unparalleled power as
well as a roadblock to her scheme to turn Israel into a
regional hegemony and fulfill the latter's dream of
achieving a 'greater Israel' stretching from the Nile to the
Euphrates. Ever since Washington's neo conservatives wanted
to enact their favorite gambit -- a regime change in Syria -
- to find a compliant leader before they put in their game
plan in one of the endgames in redrawing the region's
politico strategic map. The late president Assad during his
30 years' rule refused to submit to the west's threats and
demands and insisted on a complete Israeli withdrawal from
the Golan Heights before any peace could be agreed upon. His
son Basher is equally a hard nut.

A Syrian exile Farid Gadhri (like Iraq's Chalabi) already
came handy for a regime change. Gadhri has since been
lobbying for the pending 'Syria Liberation Act', which would
involve the Bush Administration to commit to undertake
regime change in Damascus.

Now Mr. Rafik Hariri's killing in Lebanon has come as a
Godsend opportunity for the hawks in the US administration
in increasing pressure on Syria whose inveterate opposition
to Israel has earned her the distinction of 'unusual and
extraordinary threat'.

The blatant manner in which president Bush is exploiting
Hariri's assassination leaves one in no doubt that he
regards it as an opportunity for him to act as a judge, jury
and an executioner. More so when Syria has 15,000 of her
troops stationed in Lebanon. Although the troops were
dispatched there at the request of then Lebanese President
the nationalist elements of the country resent their
presence in Lebanon.

Syria is suddenly in the dock facing the accusations of
supporting terrorism, pursuing weapons of mass destruction,
being in complicity with Iran, supporting Iraqi insurgents
and now of the assassination of Mr. Hariri. The statements
of King Abdullah of Jordan and President Ghazi Al-Yawer of
Iraq claiming that 'foreign fighters are coming across the
Syrian border that have been trained in Syria' have been
given wide publicity in US media.
The ominous developments obtaining with regard to Syria
clearly suggest that neocons have Syria as their immediate
target.

Bush's reelection is regarded by the cabal surrounding him
as an endorsement of their policy of truculent unilateralism
and in the right of Israel to their Biblical boundaries,
which they are keen to redraw. In the meantime they give
damn to the fact "that never in history" -- according to
Schlesinger, Kennedy's national security adviser -- "has the
republic been so unpopular abroad, so mistrusted, feared,
even hated."

Thomas