CAIRO, 18 April 2003 — Syria will not allow inspections of its military arsenal or its territory to refute US accusations that it possesses chemical weapons, Foreign Minister Farouk Shara said here yesterday.
Damascus “will only contribute, with its (Arab) brothers and the countries of the whole world to transforming the Middle East into a region devoid of all weapons of mass destruction — chemical, biological or nuclear,” Shara said after talks with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.
Shara was responding to questions from reporters about whether Damascus would be ready to accept UN weapons inspections similar to those that took place in Iraq, but were brought to an end by the US-led war.
Following talks with Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa, he said: “We will not authorize anything illegal...we respect the UN Charter and will not abandon our independence or dignity.”
Syria submitted Wednesday a draft resolution to the UN Security Council proposing to make the Middle East a zone free of weapons of mass destruction, while its UN ambassador, Mikhail Wehbe, said Israel was the only state in the region not to have signed treaties on banned weapons.
Washington has accused Syria of conducting chemical weapons tests in the past 15 months and US Secretary of State Colin Powell said officials would examine possible economic and diplomatic sanctions against Damascus.
However a State Department official in Washington said Wednesday that Powell may travel to Syria to defuse the tension between them.
While rejecting the accusations, Shara repeated Syria’s desire for dialogue with the United States, saying Powell was “welcome” to visit Damascus. “I think dialogue between the two countries is of common interest,” he said. The United States has also accused Damascus of smuggling weapons into Iraq and giving refuge to members of Iraq’s ousted regime, charges Syria has repeatedly denied.
Shara said the US accusations were a bid to divert attention from “the difficulties and problems facing US forces in Iraq”.
“The campaign (against Syria) could be aimed at serving Israeli interests,” said Shara, who added that some “fundamentalists in Washington say that Iraq could be a starting point to modify the geography of the region.”
The foreign minister rejected US demands on Damascus to stop lending support to Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement. “The Israeli occupation must end, then there will be no need to maintain the resistance organizations,” he said.
Asked about the possibility of Washington vetoing the draft resolution, Shara said: “It is possible. We don’t exclude use of the veto, given the strategic ties between Israel and the United States.”
