At Damascus’s Gate

Officially, the United States considers Syria a state sponsor of terrorism, and the administration has struggled to isolate it as a strategy to have it change its policies. The United States withdrew its ambassador to Syria, Margaret Scobey, in 2005 after the assassination of Lebanon’s former prime minister, Rafik Hariri. Syria, which had troops in Lebanon at the time, has been implicated in the assassination, but has denied any involvement.

This April, the White House criticiSed the speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, for visiting Damascus and meeting with President Bashar al-Assad, calling the trip “bad behaviour,” in the words of Vice President Dick Cheney.

But one month later, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met with Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem of Syria in Sharm el Sheik, Egypt, in the first high-level diplomatic contact between Washington and Damascus in two years. Both sides described the 30-minute meeting as cordial, and Rice asked Moallem for Syria’s help to contain the flow of foreign fighters traveling through Damascus to Iraq.

When Syrian officials dallied about whether to show up, demanding that the Golan Heights issue be put on the agenda, Arab officials asked Rice to modify the agenda to something the Syrians could accept. In the end, the US agreed to put the Israel-Syria issue on the conference agenda. And Damascus sent its deputy foreign minister, Faisal al-Mekdad, to the conference. He told a closed session that Israel should pull out of the Golan Heights.

Sean D. McCormack, the State Department spokesman, sounded downright benign in describing Syria’s role at the conference. “It was positive that they decided to come to Annapolis, and taken as a whole, their comments were constructive,” he said.

Bush officials said Syria had gotten better about actively trying to stop the flow of foreign fighters through Damascus to Iraq.

Stephen J. Hadley, the national security adviser, said the ball was in Syria’s court. “I think for Syria, there is a fundamental choice,” Hadley said at a forum at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

“Are they going to give up their support for terror, let Lebanon alone, support a new Iraqi government, rather than obstruct it and undermine it, and make a decision for peace?” he asked. “If they do, I think there are opportunities for them in the Golan Heights.

... contd.