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U.S.: Syria, Libya no longer sponsoring terrorism

SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM
Wednesday, January 9, 2002

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.

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