WASHINGTON Ñ The United States has quietly deemed that Libya and
Syria have largely ended their direct sponsorship of terrorist groups.
U.S. officials said the State Department has determined that the two
countries no longer sponsor any terrorist attacks. Syria began reducing its
involvement in the mid-1990s and Libya ended its involvement around the same
time.
Syria, the officials said, still harbors terrorist groups. But the
regime of President Bashar Assad no longer trains or finances insurgents.
"Libya, as a case in point, has really substantially backed out of the
terrorist sponsored game," former State Department counterterrorism official
Larry Johnson said told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "In part
because they got bombed, and part because we kept coming after them with
international sanctions, and because the world community was finally willing
to unite against them."
Johnson said Libya has expelled insurgents, including those who were
sent on terrorist missions. One of them was Abu Ibrahim.
U.S. officials said Syria reduced terrorist sponsorship in 1999. They
said Damascus ended direct support of the Kurdish Workers Party, whose
leader Abdullah Ocalan was harbored by Syria.
Ocalan was expelled from Syria and captured by Turkey.