DAMASCUS, 30 January 2004 — Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad is ready to return to Iraqi authorities money stashed in Syria by ousted President Saddam Hussein but does not want to give it to the Americans in Baghdad, a member of Iraq’s transitional Governing Council said yesterday.
“President Assad gave an assurance that Iraqi cash deposited in Syria is secure and that he is ready to return it to the Iraqi authorities,” Mowaffaq Al-Roubaie told a news conference after talks with the Syrian leader and Vice-President Abdel-Halim Khaddam.
“Assad stated that he wanted to hand over the money to the Iraqi authorities and not to the (American) occupation forces,” said Roubaie, who arrived in Damascus on Wednesday night.
He said he would ask the Governing Council to send the appropriate ministers to Damascus to take charge of the money.
Ten days ago, Assad said Syria held Iraqi funds totaling $200 million. He then linked their return to repayment to Syria of Iraqi debts run up by the Saddam regime.
Roubaie also said he had raised with Assad the question of the border between the two neighbors. “Better control of the frontier between Syria and Iraq is an extremely important question,” he said.
The United States has criticized Syria, saying it allowed anti-coalition forces to cross the border.
The visiting council member said he “understood Syria’s concern on any possible division of Iraq.
“We explained to Assad and Khaddam that we would like a federal and united democratic republic” in Iraq, said Roubaie.
The Syrians, who oppose the setting up of an independant Kurdish state in northern Iraq, had been told that “the unity of Iraq was sacred and that division of Iraq was inconceivable,” he added.
In yesterday’s action, an Iraqi civil defense officer was killed and 12 people wounded in attacks in Iraq, as an Iraqi newspaper report on foreign dignitaries and firms that allegedly profited from oil handouts under Saddam Hussein continued to spark denials across the globe.
One member of the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps (ICDC) died and another was injured in a rocket-propelled grenade attack near the northern oil center of Kirkuk, ICDC Gen. Anwar Hamed Ameen said.
Eight ICDC officers and two civilians were also wounded when a pick-up truck carrying ICDC soldiers was hit by an explosive device concealed in a handcart on the roadside near the town of Baquba, north of Baghdad, ICDC officer Muslim Jabbar said. But the US military had reports of only four ICDC personnel wounded in the Baquba incident. Further south in Basra, a four-year Iraqi child was seriously injured yesterday when an explosive device apparently targeting a passing British military convoy exploded, Iraqi police Capt. Ali Al-Sudani said.
A list published on Sunday in Iraq’s Al-Mada newspaper of oil contracts passed by the State Oil Organization that included the names of around 200 people, political organizations and religious figures who it said received free crude, prompted further denials yesterday by those named.
The handouts ran into millions of barrels between 1999 and 2002, all sold for a commission. The Iraqi oil ministry has confirmed that the documents are authentic.
