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U.S. House Votes To Sanction Syria, Israel "Happy"
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“I think that this bill is crucial to the ongoing war on terror," DeLay (AFP)
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WASHINGTON,
October 16 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - The U.S. House of
Representatives Wednesday, October 15, overwhelmingly voted (398-5) to
sanction Syria for its alleged ties to terrorist groups and purported
efforts to obtain nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.
The
legislation, the Syria Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Act,
also calls on Damascus to end its presence in Lebanon, according to
Agence France-Presse (AFP).
The
legislation gives the White House a range of options for sanctioning
Syria, from restricting U.S. exports and business investment to
downgrading Washington's diplomatic representation and imposing travel
restrictions on Syrian diplomats in the United States.
It
also bans the exportation of "dual-use" technology, and
allows the U.S. government to freeze Syria’s assets in the United
States and restrict overflight rights for Syrian aircraft inside U.S.
airspace.
It
still has to go before the Senate and be signed into law by President
George W. Bush, but its passage is not in doubt.
It
was only recently that the Bush administration dropped its opposition
to the measure, having argued that it could undermine Syrian
cooperation in the war on terrorism and have negative repercussions on
efforts to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
"I
think that this bill is crucial to the ongoing war on terror,"
said House Majority Leader Tom DeLay at a press briefing after the
Wednesday vote.
"Syria
has evidently chosen to side with the ‘terrorists’ in this war and
it's time for the government to start feeling the consequences of
their actions," said DeLay who played a key role in
bringing about the change in the administration’s position.
DeLay
said the bill should send an unmistakable message to Syria. " We
will send a very clear message to President Assad and his fellow
travelers along the "axis of evil." The United States will
not tolerate terrorism, its perpetrators or its sponsors," he
says. "And our warnings are not to be ignored."
Delay,
who had been reportedly entangled in financial scandals, is known for
unwavering support of Israel that he called himself “Christian
Zionist”, a phrase synonymous not only with support for everything
Israel does, but also for the Jewish state's theological right to go
on doing what it does regardless whether or not a few million
Palestinians get hurt in the process, said Counterpunch newsletter on
its website.
Before
reaching the president's desk, the measure must first be approved by
the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and then by the full Senate,
which is expected in the coming weeks.
The
White House has said it is waiting to see the final language of the
Syria Accountability Act once it emerges from Congress.
But
the administration is clearly on board now in support of the
legislation, as White House spokesman was quoted by Voice of America
as saying again just last week that Syria "remains on the wrong
side of the war on terror."
The
bill is facing strong opposition in the Arab world and the European
Union, who had blasted
the measure as a further escalation of the already volatile situation
in the Middle East.
Some
representatives also undermined the impact of the bill, including Jeff
Flake who had stressed that "unilateral economic sanctions just
never work."
"We
shouldn't tie the hands of the administration like this," he had
said.
The
House vote came one day after the U.S. vetoed
Tuesday, October 14, a Syrian-proposed U.N. Security Council
resolution condemning Israel for continuing its construction of the
separation wall, which snakes through the Palestinian territories in
the West Bank.
The
vote comes as relations between Damascus and Washington have soured in
recent, amid allegations that Syria has allowed assailants to cross
into Iraq for attacking the U.S. occupation forces.
But
Syria dismissed the accusations as “completely fabricated”. Syria
had dismissed the American accusations as a cover-up for failures in
neighboring Iraq, but maintained it
was prepared to meet any reasonable American request for help in
the war against terrorism and cooperate if these demands turn out to
be logical and realistic.
"Fanatics
And Warmongers"
For
his part, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad Thursday described members
of President George W. Bush's government as "fanatics and
warmongers".
Assad
told a summit meeting of leaders from around the Islamic world that
the September 2001 attacks on the United States "provided the
opportunity and pretext for a group of fanatics and ill-intentioned
people to attack human values and principles."
"Those
fanatics revealed their brutal vision of human society and started to
market the principle of force instead of dialogue, oppression instead
of justice, and racism instead of tolerance," he told a summit of
the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC).
"They
even began to create an ugly illusionary enemy which they called
'Islam'," he said.
Without
referring directly to his own country, Assad continued, "they
violate sovereignty, impose economic sanctions, invade countries
culturally..."
Assad
told the OIC summit, which is being attended by more than 30 heads of
state and government, that "some of the warmongers within the
American administration refused to listen to the world's advice"
before invading Iraq.
‘Very
Happy’
In
the meanwhile, Israel welcomed the House vote, hoping it would lead to
“the isolation of Syria”.
Israeli
Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom said Thursday he was "very
happy" after the vote.
"I
am very happy that the legislation has been passed for this will lead
to the isolation of Syria," Shalom told public radio.
"Syria
must understand that it cannot belong to two worlds at the same time
-- being a country that shelters Palestinian terrorist organizations
and Hezbollah while at the same time having international status that
allows it to be a member of the U.N. Security Council," he said.
Hezbollah
is the Lebanese Muslim resistance group whose decades-long guerrilla
attacks helped end more than 18 years of an Israeli occupation of
southern Lebanon.
Israel
still seizes Lebanon’s Shebaa Farms and Syria’s strategic Golan
Heights, and it has reportedly pressed Washington to punish the two
countries.
On
October 5, Israel carried
out an air strike on Syrian territory, hitting what it said was a
training camp used by Islamic Jihad, which claimed a suicide bombing a
day earlier in the northern port city of Haifa. The bomb killed 21
people, in addition to the female bomber.
Syria
denied that the target hit was a training camp, saying it was a
civilian site.
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