National security adviser Condoleezza Rice reeled off a list of White House grievances against Syria yesterday and said the administration is investigating a report that Iraq stashed weapons of mass destruction across the border in Syria.
Rice, briefing reporters in advance of President Bush's trip to Mexico next week, said the United States will "tie down every lead" about any possible disposition of unconventional weapons by Iraq, including the possibility that some were smuggled into Syria. U.S. forces have searched for months without finding Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, a failure that has bedeviled the White House.
Rice said the United States has "a number of issues that we'd like to talk to . . . the Syrians about." These include "the borders with Iraq and what may have happened in the past there and what may be continuing to happen there; Syrian support for terrorism in Damascus, particularly support for Hezbollah and Hamas, and their relationship with Lebanon in that regard," she said.
As for the possibility that Syria hid chemical and biological weapons for Iraq, Rice said: "I don't think we are at the point that we can make a judgment on this issue. There hasn't been any hard evidence that such a thing happened. But obviously we're going to follow up every lead, and it would be a serious problem if that, in fact, did happen."
Administration officials have been expressing increasing frustration with Syria and have said the country "is on the wrong side in the war on terror." U.S. officials believe some key leaders of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party escaped into Syria, which has a Baathist Party regime and remains on the State Department's list of state sponsors of terrorism. The administration also has complained that Syria has let foreign fighters cross the border with Iraq to attack U.S. troops; Damascus has denied that.
Rice was asked about reports claiming that Hussein used ambulances to smuggle chemical and biological weapons to three sites hidden in Syria in the months before the U.S. invasion in March. News services said the claim was made yesterday on Britain's independent Channel 5 News by a Syrian dissident, Paris-based human rights campaigner Nizar Nayyouf, who said he had been given the information by a senior source inside Syrian military intelligence he had known for two years.
Rice said she "can't dismiss anything that we haven't had an opportunity to fully assess," but she said the administration has no "indications that I would consider credible and firm that that has taken place."
The smuggling report followed an interview this week in which Syrian President Bashar Assad told London's Daily Telegraph that he would not abandon his country's suspected chemical and biological programs unless Israel gives up its undeclared nuclear arsenal.