Syria:  U.S. Officials Warn Damascus to End Weapons Efforts or Risk Sanctions

In a series of coordinated statements, senior White House officials yesterday warned Syria against continuing its suspected chemical weapons efforts, or else run the risk of diplomatic and economic sanctions (see GSN, April 14).

“Syria needs to seriously ponder the implications of their actions,” White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said.  “They need to examine their ties to terrorists, their harboring of terrorists, their harboring of Iraqi leaders, and their development of weapons of mass destruction,” he added (Ron Hutcheson, Miami Herald, April 15).

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell suggested yesterday that the United States could use sanctions to pressure Syria into abandoning its weapons efforts and support for terrorism.

“We will examine possible measures of a diplomatic, economic or other nature as we move forward,” Powell said.  “We’ll see how things unfold,” he said (Barry Schweid, Associated Press/Yahoo.com, April 15).

The United States first accused Syria of developing chemical weapons about 10 years ago, but the White House believes that such efforts have been enlarged and that now is the time to press the issue, according to the Washington Post.  Damascus is believed to have first obtained small amounts of chemical weapons from Egypt in 1973, and is now believed to have accumulated VX and sarin stockpiles, according to experts.  The CIA has noted over the last 10 years that Syria has obtained chemical technology from Russia and Eastern European nations, attempted to obtain materials from China and has frequently conducted tests with chemical munitions, according to a new report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (see GSN, April 11).

U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said yesterday that “we have seen the chemical weapons tests in Syria over the past 12, 15 months.”  There is nothing new in that allegation, however, because Syria has conducted such tests for “more than a decade,” said Anthony Cordesman, who prepared the CSIS report.

The United States could impose a number of different economic and diplomatic sanctions against Syria, as alluded to in Powell’s comments yesterday, according to officials.  While Syria has been subject to U.S. sanctions for more than 10 years already, new restrictions could be imposed under the U.S. Patriot Act on almost every U.S-Syrian financial transaction, the Post reported.  The United States could also alter the status of its relations with Syria, currently the only one of the six U.S.-designated, terrorism-sponsoring countries that enjoys full diplomatic relations, officials said.

Senior Bush administration officials said there are no plans, however, to use military force against Syria.  “We’re trying to scare them for the moment” in the hope that “Syria will change its behavior,” one official said.

Syria denied the U.S. allegations that it possesses weapons of mass destruction.

“There are biological, chemical and nuclear weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East region,” Syrian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Bouthaina Shaaban said.  “They are in Israel, not in Syria,” she added (Karen DeYoung, Washington Post, April 15). 

Mohsen Bilal, Syria’s ambassador to Spain, called the U.S. allegations an “insult” and “blackmail.”

“It’s an insult to my country, an insult to a country that is a member of the U.N. Security Council and an insult to a peaceful country that is struggling and working for a lasting peace in the Middle East,” Bilal said.  “They are blackmailing our country,” he said (Reuters/MSNBC.com, April 15).

Meanwhile, Turkey yesterday cautioned against making Syria the next target of military action, saying the Middle East “is worn out enough” after the war in Iraq.

“In our opinion, no one should allow new conflicts or new tensions in the region.  No one should permit new developments that would further disturb the region,” Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gal said.  “Now Iraq, then Syria then Iran. … These are, of course, very disturbing.  There is a need to demonstrate that these are not true.  The region is worn out enough,” Gal said (Suzan Fraser, Associated Press/Washington Post, April 15).

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Syria:  Bush Accuses Syria of Harboring Chemical Weapons

U.S. President George W. Bush said yesterday that Syria might possess chemical weapons and urged it to cooperate with U.S. efforts in the region, Reuters reported (see GSN, April 10).

“I think that we believe there are chemical weapons in Syria,” Bush said (see GSN, April 11).  Asked if the United States would consider war against Syria, Bush said, “Each situation will require a different response and, of course, we’re — first things first,” Bush said, adding “We’re in Iraq now.  And the second thing about Syria is that we expect cooperation.  And I’m hopeful we’ll receive cooperation.”

U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said that Syrians had been captured and killed while fighting U.S. forces in Iraq.

“The (Syrian) government is making a lot of bad mistakes, a lot of bad judgments in my view,” Rumsfeld said yesterday on the CBS’s Face the Nation.

Rumsfeld said he would not discuss the potential U.S. response if it were discovered that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had taken refuge in Syria.

That would show that “Syria would have made an even bigger mistake,” he said (Charles Aldinger, Reuters, April 14).

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said today that Syria must discuss U.S. allegations that it is developing weapons of mass destruction.

“We need to sit down and talk to them about it,” Straw said.  “What is important … is for Syria fully to cooperate over these questions that have been raised about the fact that some fugitives from Iraq may well have fled into Syria and other matters including whether they have in fact been developing any kind of illegal or illegitimate chemical or biological programs,” he added.

Straw said that Syria is not “next on the list” to attack and that “there is no next list” (CNN.com, April 14).

Damascus Demands Israeli WMD Disarmament

Syria announced that it would accept weapons inspectors but insisted that U.S. disarmament efforts span the Middle East and include Israel.

“We will not only accept the most rigid inspection regime, we will welcome it heartily,” said Imad Moustapha, the second ranking Syrian diplomat in Washington.

“Go everywhere, but please to every country in this Middle East.  You know very well that Israel is the country that is stockpiling nuclear weapons … Please help us free the Middle East from weapons of mass destruction,” he added (News24.com, April 14).

Israel, meanwhile, is planning to use the United States to make several demands of Syria, the Associated Press reported.

Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz said the period after the Iraq conflict presents an opportunity for Tel Aviv to demand Syria cut ties with the militant-group Hezbollah.

“We have a long list of issues we are thinking of demanding of the Syrians, and it would be best done through the Americans,” Mofaz said (Ramit Plushnick-Masti, Associated Press/Canoe News, April 14).

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France:  Testing Shows Parisian Ricin Find Was Actually Common Grain

Suspected vials of ricin discovered last month at a Paris train station have been found instead to contain wheat germ and barley, French officials said Friday (see GSN, March 25).

French police discovered the vials, which initially tested positive for ricin, at the Gare de Lyon late last month (see GSN, March 21).  Further testing found, however, that the substance consisted only of ground up grains, which have some chemical similarities to ricin, judicial officials said (Associated Press/Yahoo.com, April 11).

“It is a shame to have waited so long to learn that the antiterrorist services were working on wheat and barley,” a senior French official said.

The Paris prosecutor’s office said that it intended to seek more tests from laboratories that specialize in vegetable matter (Christophe Cornevin, Le Figaro, April 12, GSN translation).

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Israeli Response:  Country Lowers Alert Status

Israel yesterday reduced its alert status, which allows residents to cease preparations for a possible chemical weapons attack, according to the Associated Press (see GSN, March 20).  The decision to reduce the alert was based on an assessment of the situation in western Iraq, where missile attacks on Israel could have been conducted (see GSN, April 10; Associated Press/New York Daily News, April 14).

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United States:  Spokane Ricin Trial Postponed

A Washington state man, accused of plotting to kill his wife with ricin, was scheduled to go to trial yesterday but will now wait at least two more months after prosecutors Tuesday added a charge of possessing chemical weapons (see GSN, June 26, 2002).

Prosecutors filed the new charge against Kenneth Olsen, a 48-year-old former Boy Scout leader.  Olsen was originally charged with possessing a biological agent or toxin to use as a weapon.  Both charges have a maximum sentence of life in prison, the Associated Press reported.

Olsen pleaded innocent yesterday to the new charge and the defense requested a later date for the trial, which is now scheduled to begin June 30.  Prosecutors said they only discovered the rarely used, 1998 federal chemical weapons possession law recently.

“We were unaware of that until yesterday,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney Earl Hicks.

Carol Olsen has insisted that her husband is innocent, and she expressed frustration with the latest maneuver.

“They’re grasping at straws,” she said.  “We’re getting weary of waiting.  Ken did not intend to hurt anybody,” she added (Nicholas Geranios, Associated Press/Seattle Times, April 10).

In testimony last Friday, a top U.S. Army biological weapons expert said test tubes taken from Olsen had enough ricin to kill 750 people.

Trace amounts of ricin were also discovered in allergy capsules taken from Agilent Technologies, where Olsen worked, according to George Ludwig, the chief of the Applied Diagnostics Branch at the U.S. Army’s Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, Md.

Because of the conflict in Iraq, Ludwig could not travel to Spokane for the trial and his testimony was taken Friday, the Spokane Spokesman-Review reported last weekend.

About 2 grams of ricin were allegedly discovered in the test tubes and the lethal dose for a 200-pound person is 1.32 milligrams, Ludwig testified.

Olsen said he was researching ricin as a Boy Scout project, according to the Spokesman-Review (Bill Morlin, Spokane Spokesman-Review, April 5).

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Iraq:  United States Continues to Test Suspect Chemicals, Munitions

U.S. military experts are continuing to test suspicious substances found at captured Iraqi sites to determine if they are chemical weapons agents, the Washington Times reported today (see GSN, April 8).

There has been no official confirmation of reports that U.S. troops found rockets filled with sarin and mustard gas, said Army Maj. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, deputy director for operations on the Joint Chiefs of Staff.  Testing is still being conducted on substances recovered from other Iraqi sites, including an agricultural compound.

“For the other potential chemical and biological finds, we know that, in fact, there were some positive field tests (indicating chemical arms), but they were mixed,” McChrystal said.  “There were some positive and negative (test results) is my understanding.  And, in fact, we have taken samples out to get definitive testing.  So at this point, it is something we’re looking at closely, but no hard finding,” he said (Bill Gertz, Washington Times, April 9).

Samples taken from suspicious liquids found in drums at the captured agricultural compound have been sent to the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland for further identification, defense officials said yesterday.

Testing at Aberdeen is expected to take 72 hours to produce a final result, according to the Baltimore Sun.  Initial field tests produced a high positive result for the presence of weapons agents, a defense official said.

“It warrants doing the second test,” the official said.  “The samples are going to … Aberdeen,” the official added (Tom Bowman, Baltimore Sun, April 9).

U.S. troops have begun searching miles of tunnels running under Baghdad and the surrounding area where Iraqi President Saddam Hussein might have hidden weapons of mass destruction, according to the Associated Press.

“For the type of regime we’re dealing with, the tunnels represent an ideal spot to conceal weapons and serve as a hideout and in some cases an escape route,” said U.S. Central Command spokesman Lt. Mark Kitchens.

Yesterday, about 150 soldiers from the Army’s 101st Airborne Division’s 3rd Battalion, 3rd Brigade, searched a 12-room complex inside a cave near the airport outside of Baghdad, AP reported.  Inside they found signs of recent abandonment by Iraqi forces, but no soldiers or weapons, AP reported.

“We’re going to have to try to figure out where they go,” brigade commander Lt. Col. Lee Fetterman said.  “There’s no telling,” he added (Robert Tanner, Associated Press/Yahoo.com, April 9).

The German magazine Stern is preparing to report tomorrow that a handbook was found at a camp of the militant Islamic group Ansar al-Islam in northern Iraq that details chemical and biological weapons experiments, according to Agence France-Presse.  Stern reporters found the three-volume handbook, which details successful experiments conducted using ricin and various cyanide compounds, AFP reported.  It also contains information on failed experiments to produce mustard gas and VX (Agence France-Presse, April 9).

ElBaradei Asserts Continuing U.N. Role

U.N. inspectors should be allowed to verify any weapons of mass destruction discovered in Iraq, International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Mohamed ElBaradei said.  “Any test results would have to be verified by the United Nations weapons inspectors to generate the required credibility,” he said (Reuters/Washington Post, April 9).

WMD Existence May Not Matter to Public Opinion

Meanwhile, whether or not the United States finds any evidence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, it might not have an effect on public opinion domestically or internationally, according to experts.

In the United States, polls show that most people approve of the war and no longer consider finding Iraqi weapons of mass destruction as essential to its success, according to the Christian Science Monitor.  The results are reversed, however, in most other countries, where opposition to the war has grown to a point where even the discovery of banned weapons would do little to change it, the Monitor reported.

Suspicions of U.S. motives for the war in Iraq have reached a point in many countries where the discovery of weapons of mass destruction would probably be questioned, experts said.

“Even if large amounts of these weapons were found, I could imagine the public in Germany and around Europe questioning whether the finds were true or simply planted evidence,” said Jens Van Scherpenberg, a security expert at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs.

The discovery, or lack thereof, of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction could have a more significant impact on public support during the reconstruction phase, according to experts.

“At this point, (finding weapons of mass destruction) is not essential to the public’s continuing support,” said Steven Kull, director of the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland.  “But it probably would be essential to a retrospective confidence that the war was necessary once we get into the more difficult postwar phase,” he said (Marlantes/LaFranchi, Christian Science Monitor, April 9).

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