Vol. 72/No. 47      December 1, 2008

Syrian information officer Mohsen Bilal stated November 5 that he hoped the election of Barack Obama as U.S. president would “change U.S. foreign policy from a policy of war and siege to one of diplomacy and dialogue.” Obama has already sent adviser Robert Malley to meet with Syrian government officials, according to an article by Michael Rubin of the conservative American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research.

In recent months, there have been high-level talks between Syria and several imperialist powers.

French president Nicholas Sarkozy went to Damascus in September to discuss, among other matters, renewing negotiations between Syria and Israel. U.S. secretary of state Condoleezza Rice met with her Syrian counterpart, Walid Moallem, two months ago. British foreign secretary David Miliband arrived in Syria November 17 for talks with President al-Assad.

Washington has long claimed the Syrian regime allows al-Qaeda fighters to operate on its territory and to enter Iraq through its borders.

Under pressure from the Bush administration Damascus has reduced al-Qaeda infiltration into Iraq from Syria since 2003. U.S. officials estimate al-Qaeda crossings into Iraq have fallen by 80 percent in the last year, according to a Time magazine report.

The U.S. raid October 26 killed a leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq but also several Syrian construction workers, provoking anger among working people. Al-Assad permitted some protest demonstrations, a rarity in a country that has been under martial law since 1963. But the only punitive measure the regime took against the U.S. government was to expel all foreign employees of the American Language Center and the American Cultural Center.

Damascus and Tel Aviv opened negotiations in May. Israel had bombed a site in Syria said to be a nuclear facility in September 2007. The talks were broken off this year when Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert announced his resignation due to corruption charges.

Al-Assad reportedly wants the talks to be brokered by Washington and is waiting to resume them when the Obama administration takes office.

The Syrian regime’s main goal is Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights, which have been occupied by Tel Aviv since 1967. The Israeli government wants Damascus to end its support for the Palestinian group Hamas and Hezbollah in Lebanon and to break its ties to the government of Iran.

Meanwhile, Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan—who brought together Tel Aviv and Damascus for their most recent round of negotiations—has volunteered to mediate talks between Washington and Tehran.

The Iranian regime of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad sent a letter congratulating Obama on his election, the first such letter to be sent by Tehran since the 1979 Iranian revolution. Asked at a news conference about the letter, Obama replied, “Iran’s development of a nuclear weapon I believe is unacceptable. We have to mount an international effort to prevent that from happening.”  
 
 
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