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Syria-Lebanon-Iran
The Money Scandal Behind the Hariri Assassination
2005-10-30
The U.N. report on the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri released last week circulated in two versions: one available on the U.N. website that had names and passages deleted, and another, more privately available version with the deletions restored. It was in the unedited version that the names of high-ranking Syrian government officials were visible—and thus implicated—in the killing.

But in versions available in English-language Mideast media and Websites, there was another deletion of interest, that of an institution: the Bank al Madina. While the U.N. report said that Hariri's murder was political, it went on to say that individuals involved in the plot may have had other motives, including fraud, corruption and money-laundering. In short, it recommended: "Follow the money."

The Bank al Madina collapsed in early 2003, after it had been looted of about $1.65 billion. Several people in that fraud were also named in the U.N. report to the Hariri assassination. Lebanese legal sources say that while local prosecutors cannot yet prove that the plot was paid for with money originating from Madina accounts, there are significant indications that the bank's collapse and the assassination may be linked. "Madina money must have seemed untraceable to [the plotters]," says one Lebanese attorney who has discussed the case with prosecutors.

Even before its collapse, Madina was key to the shadowy financial dealings of Lebanese and Syrian politicians, as well as a way for Saddam Hussein's Central Bank of Iraq to launder money. It was during this period that large payments—in cash, cars, contracts and real estate—were allegedly made by the bank's executive secretary to key Lebanese and Syrian officials. "It has been, to my knowledge, a key money-laundering operation in the Middle East, even in the years preceding the collapse of the bank," says one former U.S. intelligence operative who worked extensively on organized crime issues in the 1990s.

The bank's executive secretary, Rana Koleilat, was jailed on multiple fraud counts from early 2004 until just prior to the Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon in April 2005. Koleilat was spirited away from her jail cell, apparently to Cairo, where she is said to be living under an assumed name. Lebanese critics of Syria say this was to keep her from providing local prosecutors with evidence against the Syrian overlords of Lebanon. Madina's key documents had been sealed by the head of Syrian Military Intelligence in Lebanon, Maj. Gen. Rustom Ghazali. Ghazali's predecessor Ghazi Kenaan was found dead, apparently a suicide, in Damascus in the week leading up to the release of the U.N. report, which mentions Kenaan and Ghazali in both edited and unedited versions.

The Chairman of the Lebanon's Central Bank reportedly received threats at about the time the Madina investigation was put on ice in mid- to late 2003. In an interview, Riad Salameh simply says, "Whatever happened, we did our duty to protect depositors and protect the reputation of the country's banking system."

Documents show that Ghazali's family received millions of dollars, some going to the general's brothers (allegedly through fake credit cards issued by the bank). Another alleged payment cited in the Lebanese and Western press includes $300,000 in cash going to the general himself. A private investigative report commissioned by Madina's principal owner Adnan Ayyash (who also faces charges over the collapse and is at odds with his former executive secretary) alleges that Rana Koleilat handed over a Beirut apartment worth an estimated $2.5 million to the office manager of Lieut. Colonel Maher Assad, the brother of Syrian President Bashar Assad. The U.N. report has linked the colonel to the Hariri assassination. Ayyash's private report also alleges that Madina may have overpaid the son-in-law of Lebanese President Emile Lahoud, an ally of Syria, for a villa. The bank forked over $10 million for property that has now been appraised at $2.5 million.

Before his death, Rafiq Hariri had denounced the closure of the Madina investigation and had accused the Syrians of financial corruption. But, given the Byzantine nature of Lebanese politics, there may have been more going on than high-mindedness. Before the bank collapsed, the Koleilat family had been setting themselves up as political and economic rivals to the Hariris, spending millions on charities and gifts in an effort to win over Hariri's Sunni constituency. But would that have made them natural allies of the Syrians, who disliked Hariri for his ties to the west? Or was the flood of cash from Madina simply too massive for anyone to have any idea of the use that all of the largesse was being put to? The weeks ahead should provide more revelations now that the U.N. has turned the international tide against Syrian influence in Lebanon—and sources in that country may no longer be afraid to speak.
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Syria-Lebanon-Iran
Both Bashar Assad & Mahmoud Abbas Are Teetering
2005-10-24
DEBKA, salt to taste:
The Syrian leadership has gathered itself in for the next shock after the UN Hariri investigation’s findings drawn up by Detlev Mehlis implicated President Bashar Assad’s close family circle in the assassination of Lebanese leader Rafiq Hariri last February. They expect the UN Security Council convening Tuesday, Oct. 25, to pass an American-French draft resolution condemning Damascus. They are also braced for another disastrous UN report. This one was drawn up by Special Middle East Envoy Terje Roed-Larsen - according to DEBKAfile’s sources, as a cooperative effort with Mehlis. It damns Damascus for violating Security Council resolution 1559 which ordered foreign forces to quit Lebanon and the dismantling of militias in the country. Larsen will expose Syria as continuing to maintain military intelligence agents in Lebanon and derailing efforts to start decommissioning the Hizballah.

The presidential palace in Damascus has set up an emergency response team to ward off these hammer blows. It is made up of officials of the presidency, the foreign ministry, the security services and legal experts. But this official framework is only a façade; it does not affect the turmoil raging inside the close Assad family circle or pacify the top military brass.
Turmoil raging like a bad toe fungus...
The Assads are dominated by four figures: the president, his sister Bouchra (regarded as the toughest and most corrupt), her husband Assef Shawqat, head of general intelligence, who is a reputed professional hitman, and Maher Assad, Bashar’s younger brother.

Close enough to be seen as part of the Assad clan is the Syrian tycoon Rami Makhlouf. He is the ruling family’s moneybags whose financial dealings, including transactions with Iraq, have filled the ruling Assad coffers with billions of dollars which are invested outside the country. Makhlouf is especially close to Bouchra.

The first crack in the family’s cohesion was forced by interior minister Ghazi Kenaan and his death (whether murder or suicide. Kenaan provided the cement for the strong bond between the president and brother-in-law Shawqat. Hariri’s assassination convinced Kenaan to pull away from that partnership. This made him a liability and his days were numbered. Then came the traumatic night of Oct. 20, when the unrevised Mehlis report on the Hariri murder handed to the UN secretary implicated Maher Assad and Shawqat by name.

Because of the universal assumption that the pair would never have performed a deed of this magnitude without the president’s knowledge, the ugly cloud moved over his head – even before any proof was adduced that could stand up in court.

This foursome is now locked in together in stifling proximity. Given the slightest hint that any formation of three is willing to sacrifice the fourth member to save themselves will tip the group over into a life-and-death struggle. That is the moment the Assad clan’s enemies are watching and waiting for – within the Assad’s own Alawite sect, among his opponents in the intelligence, security, and military communities and, it goes without saying, among Syrian opposition parties in exile. Rifat Assad, the president’s uncle, is waiting in the wings for his chance to seize the presidency. Washington and Paris are also biding their time. They all judge the Assad family as being on the brink of imploding - which is why condemnation rather than sanctions will come out of the Security Council session Tuesday and why Condoleezza Rice spoke of accountability – but not punishment.

This waiting game is also a game of hazard. The Assad family may hold up through its vicissitudes – only to be overthrown in a military coup; or by another branch of the Assad clan, such as the one led by Rifat. He may opt for violence to topple his nephew’s regime and save the dynasty. The violent removal of Syria’s ally in Beirut, president Emil Lahoud, whom the UN Hariri report places under grave suspicion, would also shake the Assad presidency to its core.
Yummmm, popcorn!
The situation of the Palestinian Authority’s Chairman Mahmoud Abbas is no less shaky. As though synchronized with the mortal UN findings against Damascus, Abbas called on the White House on Oct. 20 only to make the disturbing discovery that he was no longer President George W. Bush’s blue-eyed boy. Washington would back economic measures to improve the lives of ordinary Palestinians, but Abu Mazen’s refusal to crack down on the terrorists had cost him the White House’s support for his leadership.
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Syria-Lebanon-Iran
Analysis: U.N. report set to trouble Syria
2005-10-19
KEHL AM RHEIN, Germany, Oct. 19 (UPI) -- Detlev Mehlis, the German investigator leading the U.N. inquiry into the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, is convinced the bombing was plotted by a group of high-ranking Lebanese and Syrian intelligence personnel; his report, which he will hand over to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan Friday, is set to reopen old wounds in Syria-Lebanon relations.

According to an article by the German newsmagazine Stern, which will hit the newsstands Thursday, Mehlis, 56, has launched investigations against key figures of the intelligence circles in Beirut and Damascus. United Press International has received the full text of the article ahead of publishing.

According to the piece, written by a journalist close to Mehlis and the investigation, the German and his U.N.-mandated, 100-strong staff heard from more than 400 witnesses about the Feb. 14 assassination of Hariri, the popular former Lebanese politician, who was killed along with 20 of his followers when a bomb exploded under his convoy in downtown Beirut.

While most of the witnesses are not suspected of being involved in the killing, some high-ranking Syrian officials are: Among them, according to Stern, Roustom Ghazalé, the former head of Syrian military intelligence in Lebanon, and Asef Shawkat, the current security chief in Damascus. Mehlis questioned six more high-ranking Syrian intelligence officials, Stern said. Shawkat's involvement could prove especially damaging to Damascus, as he is the brother-in-law of Syrian President Bashar Assad.

In an interview with CNN, Assad denied any involvement in the killing and vowed to punish any Syrian proved to be involved in the affair.

The Syrian government has borne the brunt of Lebanese and international outrage at the killing, due to its extensive military and intelligence influence in Lebanon, as well as the public rift between Hariri and Damascus just before the prime minister's resignation. Mehlis' mission coincided with growing U.S. pressure on Damascus to control its 310-mile border with Iraq, stop supporting radical Palestinian groups, and end its interference in Lebanon where some say Syrian intelligence is still operating despite the withdrawal of all troops earlier this year.

The report will be made public just days after the death of Syrian Interior Minister Ghazi Kenaan rattled Damascus. Kenaan, 63, was reported to have committed suicide in his office earlier this month. He served between 1982 and 2001 as the head of Syria's military intelligence service in Lebanon where Damascus maintained several thousand troops and an important contingent of intelligence personnel from 1975 until last April 26, when under international pressure Syria was forced to withdraw. Mehlis questioned Kenaan, but not as a suspect, Stern reported.

He did, however, grill Ghazale for five hours, after which the Syrian reportedly acted rather self-assured: "I love all Lebanese, and Hariri I have loved especially dearly," he said according to Stern.

But Mehlis confronted him with his own motif: Investigators had found $20 million on one of Ghazalé's Beirut bank accounts -- all that with his rather modest monthly salary of roughly $3,000. Mehlis asked the Syrian how he got so much money, to which Ghazale reportedly did not directly answer. "What does the $20 million have to do with the murder?" he finally asked.

In Lebanon, Mehlis' investigation has led to deep insecurities. The government has beefed up security ahead of the report's publication to ease fears Beirut would slide into chaos. It had initially proclaimed the killing was done by an individual suicide bomber, but Mehlis and his team quickly found otherwise: At least eight people have been directly linked to the assassination, Mehlis found, with a total of 20 people overall involved in the case. Hariri's followers opt that the men responsible are tried before an international tribunal.

Four high-ranking members of the Lebanese intelligence have been arrested. In June, Mehlis' team had searched office and private apartment of Mustafa Hamdan, the pro-Syrian head of the presidential guard. Hamdan is accused of messing with evidence at the scene of the crime, as he ordered to fill up the crater left by the bomb, Stern said. Prosecutors arrested three more Lebanese officials, including Jamil Sayyed, the country's former security chief. Sayyed has sworn innocence, and said to prove so he would "go to the end of the world."

Syria is under great international pressure from the United States and France over the killing. Washington is expected to increase pressure on the Assad regime if the assassination proves to lead to Damascus. Observers say Syrian involvement in the killing would be near political suicide: It would likely destroy Syria's international reputation and hand its opponents a reason to deliver the blow that could finally destabilize the Damascus regime, and even possibly bring it down. Washington considers Syria a state sponsor of terrorism, though it maintains diplomatic relations with it.

None of the big political killings in Lebanon were solved in recent years -- but Mehlis has a reputation of getting to the truth. The 56-year-old German from Berlin has solved the "La Belle" case, the terrorist bombing of the Berlin discotheque in 1986, which killed two U.S. soldiers and a Turkish woman. Mehlis accused Libya of direct involvement in the bombing.

The importance of his new report and his own role might be compared to that of Hans Blix, the U.N. investigator who was deployed to Iraq to find weapons of mass destruction, which he did not.

The U.S. magazine Newsweek earlier this month reported that the U.S. government had discussed a possible military intervention in Syria. According to the article, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice convinced her colleagues to await Mehlis' report for a decision. The goal seems to be to "get [the regime] by the throat, and then really squeeze," Joshua Landis, a Fulbright scholar in Damascus who runs an influential blog called Syriacomment.com, told Newsweek.

So does Mehlis' report decide over war and peace? Or does it simply result in sanctions that might bring about the end of the Assad regime?
"I never wanted to be compared with Hans Blix," Mehlis told Stern. "But now I know how he must have felt."
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Syria-Lebanon-Iran
DEBKAfile: Mehlis fires his Lebanese spokesman for press leaks
2005-10-18
The UN prosecutor is in Vienna working on the final draft of his findings on the murder of Lebanese leader Rafiq Hariri last February. His report is due out Friday, Oct. 21. The only other person privy to its contents, according to DEBKAfile’s exclusive sources, is the UN Middle East Envoy Terje Roed-Larsen. They add that Mehlis has just fired the inquiry team’s Lebanese spokesman Najib Farij - it is believed over leaks to the Lebanese media about the Syrian interior minister Ghazi Kenaan’s reported suicide.

Roed-Larsen arrived in Paris Monday, Oct. 17, officially for talks with Lebanese prime minister Fouad Siniora but, according to DEBKAfile, to attend a broad-based conference with the senior American, French and Lebanese diplomatic and intelligence officials involved in the Hariri investigation on a common front for the Mehlis report’s publication. We can reveal here that barring last-minute developments, the report will focus on five main points:

1. The Hariri assassination was not a hastily concocted operation but planned down to the last detail over many months.

2. It was plotted and executed by security and intelligence bodies or groups – not individuals.

3. There are pointers to possible Syrian and Lebanese intelligence involvement, but no legal proofs.

4. The suspected source of the orders to stage the assassination is to be found at high-ranking Syrian and Lebanese levels.

5. Since the report contains findings rather than proofs, the UN prosecutor will request more time to complete his investigation with focus on the Syrian role.

Two further developments in the affair: A key witness, Muhammad Zouhayr Asseddiq, the Syrian intelligence officer who defected to Paris with vital information for the UN and French authorities, was placed in detention by the French police Monday, Oct. 17. His arrest was officially presented as arising from contradictions in his testimony, but intelligence circles close to the investigation believe he was placed in protective custody in advance of the UN report’s publication.
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Syria-Lebanon-Iran
France Arrests Witness in Hariri Probe
2005-10-17
PARIS (AP) - Police arrested a former Syrian intelligence officer who is considered an important witness in a U.N. investigation of the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, officials said Monday. Mohammed Zuhair Al-Siddiq was taken into custody Sunday in the Paris area by France's DST counterintelligence service, police said. He was the subject of an international arrest warrant and is expected to be extradited, the officials said. The arrest warrant, issued by Lebanese Magistrate Elias Eid, accused Al-Siddiq of giving false testimony and misleading the U.N. investigation, judicial officials in Lebanon said.

Al-Siddiq has been billed by Arab media as being a leading witness in the inquiry by chief U.N. investigator Detlev Mehlis of Hariri's Feb. 14 killing. Lebanese Minister of Youth and Sports Ahmed Fatfat, a close Hariri ally, said Al-Siddiq's testimony was inaccurate "perhaps because he wanted it this way, either for personal interest or perhaps because he was planted to mislead the investigation." "It will all show in court," he told Voice of Lebanon radio, after being asked about the arrest. Beirut newspaper Al-Mustaqbal went further, alleging that Al-Siddiq was an accomplice in the planning and execution of the bombing that killed Hariri. The newspaper is owned by the Hariri family.

The Syrians have sought to discredit 45-year-old Al-Siddiq as being a wanted man at home for fleeing his military service and for fraud, according to media reports.
Better put him on "suicide watch", if you get my drift
Hariri and 20 others were killed by a bomb that blew up his motorcade in central Beirut. The killing touched off a groundswell of protest in Lebanon and internationally, forcing Syria to withdraw all of its thousands of troops in Lebanon and end nearly three decades of domination of its tiny neighbor. The Mehlis team has named four Lebanese generals, all close to Syria, as suspects in the assassination. Lebanon has arrested them. Last week, one of seven Syrian officials who was questioned by the investigation, Interior Minister Ghazi Kenaan, was wacked committed suicide.
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Syria-Lebanon-Iran
DEBKA: UN investigators demand autopsy on Kenaan
2005-10-16
DEBKAfile Exclusive: From Vienna, UN investigator Detlev Mehlis has demanded Syrian permission to perform an autopsy on the body of interior minister Ghazi Kenaan whom Damascus reported committed suicide last Wednesday

Mehlis is due to submit his findings on the murder of Lebanese leader Rafiq Hariri to the UN Security Council in one week. His latest action came amid the cloud of suspicion hanging over the death of the former Lebanon strongman as the investigation closed in on Damascus. Kenaan was a longtime repository of the Assad regime’s innermost secrets and boss of its security and intelligence agencies. If not complicit, the dead man would certainly have possessed dangerous knowledge about the mechanics of a Syrian involvement in the Hariri murder plot. He was one of the seven Syrian senior officials Mehlev questioned in his inquiry.
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Syria-Lebanon-Iran
Assad goes to the mattresses?
2005-10-14
DEBKAfile Exclusive: Syrian military and security forces are on the highest alert in the mountain strongholds of the ruling Alawi clans east of Latakia. They are braced for a vendetta within the Alawi community of which President Bashar Assad and his supporters are leading members. They fear that at least two clans may reject the official claim that interior minister Ghazi Kenaan died by his own hand Wednesday and seek revenge.
It's time for Syrian Family Feud!
Assad had thought to appoint Kenaan’s successor - most likely a former interior minister Hassan Harabe – without delay. He was deterred by a warning that he could no longer rely on the loyalty of the security and intelligence services ruled by the dead minister.
"Baby Assad dun had da boss wacked!"
This assumes that he ever once trusted the security and intel services.
There has been speculation in Washington and Damascus that the Assad may have made former Lebanon strongman and pillar of his regime the scapegoat should the UN Hariri investigators point the finger at top Syrian circles when their report comes out on Oct. 21.
"Nothing personal, Ghazi. Just business"
DEBKAfile’s Syria observers report that the last high Syrian military alert occurred in 2000 towards the end of Bashar’s father president Hafez Assad term when prime minister Mahmoud Zouaby, a Sunni, was whacked killed himself after he was imprisoned on corruption charges. The only time before that was in 1968 when Syrian military intelligence chief Gen. Abndel Karim al Jundi, an Ismaili, also was whacked committed suicide.
Seems to be a pattern there.
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Syria-Lebanon-Iran
Assad vows to punish any Syrian found involved in Hariri's murder
2005-10-14
President Bashar al-Assad vowed Wednesday that Syria would punish as a traitor any national implicated in the murder of former Lebanese premier Rafik Hariri. Speaking in an interview with CNN, Assad denied suspicions that Syria was involved in the death of Hariri, saying his death was against Syria's interests.

Asked if any Syrians had played a role, Assad said: 'I don't think so. If that happened then this is treason.' He added that Syria would be prepared to see any eventual suspects hauled before a world court: 'They should be punished internationally or in Syria ... if they are not punished internationally they will be punished in Syria.'

Speaking in English to CNN's Christiane Amanpur in Damascus, ...
... so that he could say something entirely different in Arabic ...
... Assad strongly denied that he had played any personal role in the assassination. 'This is against our principles and my principle. I am a quiet person and i would never do such a thing,' Assad replied. He stressed that 'we do not have a system of assassinations in Syria.'

CNN's interview was done a few hours before Damascus announced that Syria's interior minister Ghazi Kenaan, Syria's intelligence chief in Lebanon from 1982 to 2003, had committed suicide. Kenaan's death comes just two weeks before a U.N. commission of inquiry into the Hariri assassination is due to release a report on its findings. Syria and its allies in Lebanon have been widely blamed as being behind the Hariri murder, something Damascus has strongly denied. Hariri's assassination last February caused an uproar in Lebanon which led to massive demonstrations which along with international pressure forced Syria to withdraw all its troops from its neighbour, thus ending a 30-year military presence in the country.
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Syria-Lebanon-Iran
Sharaa: Mehlis promised to refute allegations against Syria
2005-10-14
Detlev Mehlis, the head of the international team investigating the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, "has promised Syria to refute the media's allegations," against Damascus, said Syria's Foreign Minister Farouk Sharaa yesterday.

Sharaa, who was speaking at the funeral of Syrian Interior Minister Ghazi Kenaan in El-Bhamra, said Damascus "expects Mehlis to deny... the false information spread by a Lebanese media outlet [New TV]," about what took place in Mehlis' meetings with the Syrian officials last month. "The wrongful accusations of some media outlets and what was leaked from the investigation team about things that never happened contributed to killing Kanaan," he said.

Mehlis had questioned several Syrian officials "as witnesses" in the Hariri investigation this September, including Kenaan, who was the chief of Syria's intelligence in Lebanon between 1982 and 2002. Kenaan, who was constantly accused in the Lebanese media of being linked to Hariri's assassination, was found dead in his office on Wednesday. Syrian investigators confirmed yesterday he had committed suicide, nine days before Mehlis is due to present his final report on the investigations.

Sharaa added: "We are still waiting for Mehlis' reply to these allegations [against Syrian officials]." However, Syrian opposition figure Aktham Naise said in Geneva: "Even if Kenaan was not implicated in the murder of Hariri... I am convinced others will be implicated in the Mehlis report and they should be punished for their crimes."
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Syria-Lebanon-Iran
Ghazi Kenaan laid to rest in low key funeral
2005-10-14
The body of Syrian Interior Minister Ghazi Kenaan was laid to rest in his northern home town in a low-key funeral, and a state investigation confirmed that the former strongman in Lebanon committed suicide by shooting himself in the mouth. About 1,000 relatives and villagers walked behind the coffin, draped in a Syrian flag, in the village of Bhamra where black banners hung from some buildings, witnesses said. Kenaan was buried in a family cemetery.

Kenaan killed himself on Wednesday, officials said. Damascus Attorney General Mohammad al-Louji said forensic examination and an examination of his office concluded that Kenaan shot himself in the mouth twice with his own revolver, a .38 caliber Smith and Wesson. Loji said he found Kenaan's blood-soaked body minutes after the minister shot himself. Loji, who rushed to Kenaan's office after the incident, said a day of exhaustive work proved beyond doubt the minister had killed himself.
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Syria-Lebanon-Iran
Will Assad Save Himself by Going the Way of Qaddafi?
2005-10-04
How to save Syrian president Bashar Assad and his regime from toppling – or rather how to save him from himself? This was the main topic exercising Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak and Saudi King Abdullah when they put their heads together in Riyadh Monday Oct. 3. They needed to talk urgently because the UN investigator of the Hariri assassination Detlev Mehlis reported to the UN secretary general Kofi Annan and the Security Council that he has finished his business in Damascus and would not be returning. He had gathered all the evidence he needs to indict two of Assad’s close kinsmen, his brother Maher, head of the presidential guard brigade, and brother-in-law, Assef Shawqat, who is married to his sister Bushra, for involvement in the assassination plot against the Lebanese leader.

The clincher was obtained, according to DEBKAfile’s intelligence sources, in a Lebanese security forces swoop on the MTC Touch mobile phone company in Beirut Sept. 27. (This network is owned by Kuwait-based Mobile Telecommunications Co.) The officers copied data from eight telephone lines and took several employes away for questioning. These lines were allegedly used by Maher Assad, Assef Shawqat and two Syrian strongmen, Syrian interior minister Gen. Ghazi Kenaan and director of Syrian Special Intelligence Gen. Rusoum Ghazaleh, and other Syrian intelligence officers for contacts with their Lebanese accomplices who staged the bombing-shooting attack in Beirut last February. These accomplices set up a headquarters in the Hamara district in two apartments. Four senior Lebanese security officers are also in detention over the crime.

In September, as the noose tightened around the neck of Assad’s nearest and dearest, Saudi king Abdullah and Mubarak rushed into rescue mode.

On September 23, DEBKA-Net-Weekly revealed:

The Saudi monarch is bidding for President George W. Bush to give the Syrian president another chance. He is offering a Saudi-Egyptian guarantee for Assad to live up to any obligations he may be persuaded to undertake. The scheme as put before Bush is embryonic. Neither side has accepted it. The Saudi ruler proposes to permit the Syrian president to tread the same path as Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi in 2003, when he scrapped his weapons of mass destruction in return for admittance to Washington’s good graces.

The Assad version, if accepted, would consist of severing the links between the Damascus political and military elite and Iraqi Baathist insurgents and al Qaeda terrorists in Syria and Iraq. Top Saudi and Egyptian intelligence counter-terror experts would help the Damascus regime get rid of the terrorist elements which have struck root in Syria.

The banking systems of Syria and Lebanon will halt the flow of moneys from Saddam Hussein’s Baathists and al Qaeda accounts to bankroll the Iraqi insurgency. Like Libya, Syria would dismantle its chemical and biological weapons and its nuclear program, as well as its WMD-capable missiles.

Damascus would help America disband the Lebanese Hizballah terrorist organization, mainly by blocking Syrian arms supplies and providing Washington with intelligence on Hizballah’s arms caches. Damascus would also shut down the command centers, offices and the training facilities serving Palestinian terror groups in Syria for decades. This would entail the jihadist Hamas and Jihad Islami and the radical Palestinian “Fronts” losing their sanctuaries.
That would get rather bloody. I'll have to lay in a couple cases of popcorn.
According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s sources, the Saudi ruler has assured US officials he will insist on Assad going public on these steps for the sake of his rehabilitation - although easing into them gradually.
"Shouldn't take more than a couple of decades"
The quid pro quo proposed by Riyadh and Cairo is a halt on US and international pressure on the Syrian regime to mend its ways, the suspension of American economic sanctions and the resumption of economic assistance in the framework of a generous US-Saudi aid package to build a modern economy. Washington would have to lean hard on Ariel Sharon, or whoever succeeds him as Israeli prime minister, for peace talks culminating in the withdrawal from the Golan - on the same lines as the pull-back from Gaza and prospective evacuations of the West Bank.
Uh huh, you just knew they'd throw that wrench into the mix

DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s Washington and Middle East sources report that the Bush administration has gone no further than cautiously considering the Saudi-Egyptian blueprint and discussing it. All the same, some parties, especially Saudi and Egyptian officials, are pushing hard to present Washington’s U-turn on Damascus as an accomplished fact.
Getting a little ahead of themselves
DEBKAfile adds: One of the parties keen on getting the Saudi-Egyptian plan off the ground leaked to the media Monday, the day Mubarak flew to Riyadh, that US officials had been testing Jerusalem’s preference for Assad’s successor. Israeli officials are reported to have said that Assad could stay - as long as he was “weakened.” This leak sounds like a ploy to convey the impression that the Egyptian-Saudi rescue blueprint is in the bag and has even found acceptance in Jerusalem. This is most improbable – especially since, according to our sources in Damascus, Assad is far from seizing the Qaddafi formula for changing his spots. There are serious obstacles to be overcome first.

1. He is still haggling on terms, guarantees for his regime’s durability and which cronies can be saved from prosecution by the UN Hariri inquiry.

2. Assad has developed more than one lifeline. In addition to the Saudi-Egyptian rescue plan, he is cozying up to Moscow and to Tehran for an escape or counter-gambit against the US-French drive to bring him down and the UN investigator’s findings. Some of the ideas floated between Damascus, Tehran and Moscow, might be of concern to Washington, US forces in Iraq and Israel. DEBKAfile will reveal these plans shortly.

3. The Syrian ruler’s fate hangs heavily on the final report Mehlis submits on the Hariri case. If he goes right to the top and assigns culpability to the president in person, not even the Saudi-Egyptian effort can save him. But if the finger of accusation stops at his close aides – such as his brother and brother-in-law, or lower echelons such as Generals Kenaan and Ghazale, Assad will hold the option of throwing them to the wolves and jumping aboard the rescue wagon.

4. He would have to be pretty nimble for this desperate ploy. The men he proposes to sacrifice might well have other plans, such as mounting a military coup to topple him to save themselves.
If they get even a hint he's thinking about throwing them to the wolves, Assad is going to have a unfortunate accident
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Syria-Lebanon-Iran
Tough Year for Assad So Far
2005-09-27
It's been a rough year for Syrian President Bashar Assad, and it may get even rougher. With tensions high after another Lebanon bombing, Assad's regime could be shaken to its core if a U.N. probe points to Syrian involvement in the murder of a former Lebanese prime minister.
Ash heap of history, target date: 9-11-2006.
Assad has endured a humiliating pullout from Lebanon, ending 29 years of Syrian domination over its tiny neighbor. The former eye doctor who came to power five years ago also has been at the receiving end of increasingly menacing U.S. demands to stop insurgents from going into Iraq. German prosecutor Detlev Mehlis, who is leading the U.N. probe into the Feb. 14 killing of former Lebanese Premier Rafik Hariri, is scheduled to present his findings to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Oct. 21.

With few friends left to turn to, Assad flew to Egypt on Sunday to enlist the help of Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak, a longtime U.S. ally, according to two officials familiar with their talks. Mubarak advised Assad to fully cooperate with the probe and surrender any Syrians U.N. investigators name as accomplices in the killing. The Egyptian leader also counseled Assad to order a halt to harshly anti-U.S. comments by Syrian officials and in the state-run media. But Mubarak's plea for cooperation is potentially difficult for Assad because the U.N. search for conspirators could lead them to senior Syrian security officials, members of Assad's inner circle or even relatives.
Or to Bashir himself, if the story about the taped conversations is to be believed. I have this vision of him holed up in the Presidential Palace™, hollering "You'll never take me alive, coppers!"
Some Assad family members hold powerful positions in the intelligence and security services. Assad would be risking his credibility at home if he were to hand over suspects to U.N. or Lebanese investigators, especially because Syrian media and officials have suggested the probe had a political slant. Failure to comply with extradition requests, on the other hand, could bring the United States and France to seek a U.N. Security Council resolution slapping punitive measures on Syria, including economic and trade sanctions. It could also lead to the freezing of assets or even a ban on foreign travel by senior officials. Assad "is damned if he does, and damned if he doesn't," said Rosemary Morris, a Middle East expert at the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London. "Who will trust him again in his country if he hands over Syrians to be tried?"

Syria's media, a mirror for government thinking, all but ignored Mehlis last week when he visited Syria to question officials in connection with Hariri's killing. Neither he nor Syria disclosed the names of those questioned, but Lebanese media said they included Syria's last intelligence chief in Lebanon, Brig. Gen. Rustum Ghazale, two aides and Syrian Interior Minister Ghazi Kenaan, who was intelligence chief in Lebanon until five years ago. The Syrian media's treatment of Mehlis' visit, says dissident Michel Kilo, showed the absence of a cohesive government strategy to deal with a potentially dangerous issue. "There has been confusion in the way we dealt with all major issues in the past two years," said Kilo, reached in Damascus by telephone. "If half of what we hear is true, then we are faced with a very dangerous situation and have reason to be very concerned."

Syria has denied involvement in the Hariri killing. On the issue of Iraq, it says it is doing everything it can to stop militants from using its territory to join insurgents there. It also says it has no intelligence operatives left in Lebanon after it completed a troop pullout under pressure last April. However, a series of bombings in Lebanon targeting anti-Syrian figures has raised questions about how much influence Syria retains there. Political talk show host May Chidiac was the latest victim. She had just started her car Sunday when a bomb exploded, ripping off an arm and a leg. Chidiac worked for the private Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation, which opposes a Syrian role in Lebanon.

The United States has not directly blamed Syria for Hariri's killing, but its impatience with Syria appears to be growing. The Bush administration accused Syria last week of meddling in its neighbors' affairs, blocking democracy and failing to stop insurgents from entering Iraq. The State Department also has called Syria a "destabilizing element" in the region, and President Bush has warned that Assad must understand that Washington "takes his lack of action (on Iraq) seriously." Yet the continuing mayhem in Iraq may give Washington pause about doing anything more drastic to bring about regime change in Syria, says one Western government official. One analyst loyal to Assad's regime says Washington will never be satisfied regardless of whether Syria cooperates or not. "The Americans are using the stick, but there is no sign of the carrot," said Imad Fawzi Shueibi. "It makes no sense for Syria to be told to do this, this and that - and get nothing in return."
Not killing you all is the carrot. Think hard on that.
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