Bush discusses Syrias future with Assads opposition

Bush discusses Syrias future with Assads opposition
April 30, 2005aljazeera.com
The Bush administration is reaching out to the Syrian opposition over growing fears that the political unrest in Lebanon could spill over and suddenly destabilise Syria, which borders four countries pivotal to U.S. Middle East policy -- Israel, Iraq, Lebanon and Turkey, U.S. and Syrian sources said.
In a recent interview Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that the U.S. is talking to "as many people as we possibly can" about the situation in Syria, as well as in Lebanon, to ensure that Washington is prepared in the event of yet another abrupt political upheaval.
"What we're trying to do is to assess the situation so that nobody is blindsided, because events are moving so fast and in such unpredictable directions that it is only prudent at this point to know what's going on," Rice told Washington Post editors and reporters, citing "the possibility for what I often call discontinuous events, meaning that you were expecting them to go along like this and all of a sudden they go off in this direction, in periods of change like this. So we're going to look at all the possibilities and talk to as many people as we possibly can."
A meeting hosted by the State Department's new "democracy czar" Elizabeth Cheney, brought together senior administration officials from Vice President Cheney's office, the National Security Council and the Pentagon and about a dozen prominent Syrian Americans, including political activists, community leaders, academics and an opposition group, a senior State Department official said.
The opposition group comes from the Syria Reform Party, a small U.S.-based Syrian organization often compared to the Iraqi National Congress led by former exile Ahmed Chalabi.
U.S. officials, however, yesterday denied that the meeting was intended to coordinate efforts to oust Syrian President Bashar Assad's government.
"That would be a monumental distortion," a senior State Department official said. "But it was a discussion about supporting reform and change in the region and specifically Syria -- and how we can help that and work with people in the region and Syria to support that process."
The new U.S. political tactic is a direct result of President Bush's discussion with French President Jacques Chirac, said U.S and European officials. Advising against any discussion of "regime change," Chirac told Bush that the Damascus government was unlikely to survive the withdrawal of Syrian forces from Lebanon. The French president predicted that free elections in Lebanon would in turn force change inside Syria, possibly unravelling Assad's government, U.S. sources said.
According to American policy analysts, since that meeting, the Bush administration has begun looking at possible political options in Syria. "They're taking seriously that a consequence of getting out of Lebanon will be the collapse of the Assad regime, and they're looking around for alternatives," said Flynt Leverett, former senior director for Middle East affairs at the National Security Council under Bush.
The Syrian Americans who attended the meeting urged the administration to take tentative steps to pressure Damascus said Farid Ghadry, president of the Syrian Reform Party.
Ghadry added that the Syrian opposition was encouraged by the "open and constructive" meeting, which was attended by key players in the administration's democracy policy such as John Hannah from Cheney's office, Robert Danin from the National Security Council and the Pentagon's David Schenker.
Some U.S. analysts and other Syrian Americans warned that the Syrian Reform Party and its allies are unrepresentative and too small to have any impact.
"Its membership is extremely thin and is not taken seriously. It's almost unheard-of in Syria," said Murhaf Jouejati, director of George Washington University's Middle East Studies Program.
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