Syria Will Try to Work With Washington Despite Sanctions Threat, Official Says

Syria will continue a dialogue with the United States despite this week’s Senate passage of a bill that would enact economic sanctions against Damascus if it does not end its alleged WMD efforts, Syrian Information Minister Ahmad al-Hassan said in a statement published today (see GSN, Nov. 12).

“Syria will not close the door on dialogue with the American administration, even if the hawks in that administration want to push for escalation in an unjustifiable way,” al-Hassan said. “The threats against Syria are not new, but they have intensified recently,” he said (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, Nov. 13).

Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher and Arab League chief Amre Moussa have called on U.S. President George W. Bush to “delay” the bill’s eventual implementation, Agence France-Presse reported (Roueida Mabardi, Agence France-Presse/Washington Times, Nov. 13).

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