Syria confident of surviving US pressure http://today.reuters.com/business/newsarticle.aspx?type=reutersEdge&storyID=2006-03-21T104130Z_01_L20665914_RTRUKOC_0_US-SYRIA-STABILITY.xml
Tue Mar 21, 2006
By Khaled Yacoub Oweis
DAMASCUS (Reuters) - Syria's President Bashar al-Assad has consolidated his grip on security forces and delayed political reforms in anticipation of a long standoff with the United States, diplomats and Baath Party sources say. They predict that the United States will keep pressing Syria to change its policy rather than try to topple Assad, citing the weakness of the Syrian opposition and U.S. aversion to any more regional instability after the upheaval in Iraq.
Their views contrast markedly with speculation that abounded last year of a U.S.-engineered "regime change" following the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri, which a U.N. inquiry linked to Syrian officials.
Syria denied involvement, but came under intense international pressure and was forced to end its 29-year military presence in neighboring Lebanon. The United States and France say they are waiting for the final conclusions of the U.N. investigation before asking the Security Council to take any further action against Syria.
Western diplomats say Syria's Baathist leadership appears to have recovered its poise after last year's defection of former Vice President Abdel-Halim Khaddam and the death of Interior Minister Ghazi Kanaan in what officials said was a suicide.
They say Baathist rule in Syria is unlikely to crumble. Israel also has no wish to see instability or the rise of Muslim militants in its northern neighbor, they add.
"The United States has no appetite for military action against Syria. There is no chance of popular revolt and a coup is unlikely, although the Syrians are not off the hook completely over the Hariri killing," one diplomat said. Assad, who began his rule in 2000 with promises of a looser political system, has kept the Baath party's monopoly on power and the diplomat said he had recently made personnel changes in his sprawling security apparatus. "Bashar has stopped moves toward political openness ... but a cyclical approach to reform has been a hallmark of his rule," another diplomat said.
IRAQ EXAMPLE
The cautionary tale of Iraq has complicated the task of Syria's disparate opposition factions. They have campaigned for civil and human rights, but most have avoided any U.S. embrace and lined up with the government against American pressure.
Exiled opposition groups, including the Muslim Brotherhood, announced last week the formation of a front to oust Assad, but few analysts believe it can shake the regime for now.
"They are trying to build a structure that America could find attractive to use to oust the regime, similar to Iraq, but no one wants to see another Iraq situation," said Abdelwahab Badrakhan, deputy editor of the pan-Arab newspaper al-Hayat.
Even reformers within the ruling Baath Party say there is no immediate alternative to a strong central government to maintain stability, citing what they see as rising Islamist power.
Syrian officials often point to the Islamist insurgency they put down in the early 1980s. Today's Muslim Brotherhood says it seeks a peaceful transition to a democratic, multi-party state.
Assad can still count on a powerful security apparatus to deter dissent. Even if Syrians fear it, few of them want to see their country replicate the bloody chaos of Iraq.
Syrian political commentator Faisal Qassem said the Iraq war, supposed to herald the demise of autocratic rule in the region, had in fact bolstered Arab governments which offer their citizens stability, security and in some cases prosperity.
"One of the consequences of the invasion was to give new life to these regimes," Qassem wrote in an Internet article.
"The Iraq experience made millions curse the day they dreamt of outside intervention."
Nevertheless, Syria still faces the potentially damaging results of the U.N. investigation into Hariri's killing.
A U.N. report in October by German prosecutor Detlev Mehlis implicated Syrian security officials in the February 14, 2005 assassination and said Damascus had impeded his inquiry.
Syria denounced the report as politically motivated.
A report by Mehlis's Belgian successor, Serge Brammertz, said last week that groundwork had been laid for better Syrian cooperation with the inquiry, but did not clear the Syrian authorities.
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