Syrian President Bashar Assad said Thursday the United States had provided no proof to warrant imposing sanctions on his country and added he would not bow to U.S. demands to expel Palestinian militants.
| "Nope. Nope. Won't do it. Over my... uhhh... dead body." |
Assad disputed the case that the Bush administration had made to impose the embargo, saying Syria does not have weapons of mass destruction and there is no evidence of foreign fighters crossing the border from Syria to Iraq. He said Syria had asked Washington for evidence of infiltration from Syria into Iraq. "We have no response to the request to give us one passport, one name, one evidence of that. So far, we haven't received anything," Assad told a group of American editors.
| "Except for the corpses piled up on the border, of course..." |
Assad met the editors at the presidential palace while they were on a fact-finding trip arranged by the Washington-based International Reporting Project. President Bush imposed the sanctions Tuesday. They ban all U.S. exports to Syria except food and medicine and they forbid direct flights between Syria and the United States. The penalties came as a response to allegations that Syria was supporting terrorism and undermining U.S. efforts in neighboring Iraq. Bush signed the order under a law that Congress passed by an overwhelming vote late last year. Assad tried to play down the impact of the sanctions. "In fact, we do not have any reaction," he said when first asked about the embargo. "Not because that does not affect us, but we do not know so far how they will affect us." Bilateral trade amounts to US$300 million annually. Syrian officials have said the embargo will have little economic effect. The European Union is ignoring the sanctions and sending a high-level trade delegation to Damascus this weekend. "Syria will continue to live its daily life, but we will continue to be always open" for dialogue, especially on the Middle East and Iraq, the Syrian leader said.
| "Until the other shoe drops..." |
Syria hosts Palestinian militant groups such as Islamic Jihad and Hamas which are regarded as terrorist organizations by Israel and the United States. Assad's government regards them as legitimate groups fighting Israel's occupation of Palestinian land. Syria is on the State Department's list of terrorist-sponsoring countries. Assad said Thursday "there are no leaders" of Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Syria, only political spokesmen who came to Syria after being expelled by Israel. There was no place for these Palestinians to go to, he added. "If you ask them to go, where could they go?"
Assad said. "They have to go back to their land and Israel could put them in jail ... We don't expel people. They should go back home." The head of Hamas' political bureau, Khaled Mashaal, the group's highest-ranking official, has lived in Damascus since 1999. The leader of Islamic Jihad, Ramadan Abdullah Shallah, moved to Syria in the 1990s. |