The Bush administration has ruled out a Pentagon proposal for a military strike
against Syria.
Officials said the administration has rejected a proposal
from the Defense Department to begin military operations in Syria.
Instead, the administration has sought to isolate Assad in an effort to
pressure him to abandon his policies and seek help from the United States.
Officials said the U.S. policy was similar to that adopted toward Libya,
which in 2003 vowed to shelve its weapons of mass destruction and
medium-range missile programs.
The U.S. military and
Pentagon have called for American military operations in Syria in an effort
to force the Assad regime to end support for the Sunni insurgency in Iraq.
Still, the administration has concluded that Syria has granted haven to
Saddam Hussein agents to finance the Sunni insurgency in Iraq. Officials
said the Assad regime has also provided training camps for Al Qaida network
chief Abu Mussib Al Zarqawi, the leading insurgent in Iraq.
"We're looking for a change in Syrian behavior," James Jeffrey, the
senior adviser on Iraq to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, said on
Tuesday. "We have not yet seen it and we are impatient."
But Ms. Rice said United States and Iraq would confront Syria through
diplomatic and other measures. She said Baghdad and Washington would form a
coalition that would address the use of Syria as an insurgency base against
the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq.
"I think you will see over the next couple of weeks that we will have
to address these issues in a multilateral fashion [to] get the Syrian regime
to change its behavior," Ms. Rice said on Oct. 16. "We have focused on
getting the Syrian regime to change its behavior. The Syrian regime is out
of step with what is going on in the region."
The assertion ended a debate within the administration
regarding U.S. military options against Syria.
But officials said Ms. Rice, regarded as the closest aide to President
George Bush, opposed U.S. military operations in Syria. The secretary was
said to have argued that U.S. operations in Syria would be
counter-productive and raise the ire of such regional U.S. allies as Egypt
and Saudi Arabia.
"The last thing Egypt wants is to see another point of tension in the
region," Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abu Al Gheit said.
Instead, the United States plans to coordinate with such European Union
states as Britain, France and Russia for a diplomatic offensive against
Syria in the United Nations. At the same time, the administration would seek
to recruit support Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey, all of them neighbors of
Damascus.
"This isn't a matter of, you know, solely a matter of United States
concerns with Syria," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said on
Tuesday. "Syria has problems with all of its neighbors, virtually all of its
neighbors in the region."
Officials said Ms. Rice also opposed any U.S. effort to topple the Assad
regime. They said the secretary, as well as the U.S. intelligence community,
have assessed that Sunni Muslim supporters of Al Qaida were the only ones
prepared to take over for Assad.
"In many cases they're coming through Damascus airport," Ms. Rice said.
"This isn't crawling across the border."
