UP FRONT

Did The United States Make
A Secret Deal With Syria?

JAMES D. BESSER

Washington Correspondent

D

id the Bush ad-
ministration make
secret promises to
Syria in return for President
Hafez al-Assad's token sup-
port in the Gulf war?
In recent days there has
been a renewed rumbling of
concern on Capitol Hill as
some legislators see new
signs of an American tilt
towards Syria that seems
reminiscent of administra-
tion policies that favored the
government of Saddam Hus-
sein in the 1980s.
As a result, Congress has
started taking some low-key
steps to head off any back-
door approach to Syria.
Israel's friends in Wash-
ington were upset that Pres-
ident Bush met with Syrian
President Assad in Geneva
late last year, particularly in
light of the strong evidence
that Syria was involved in
the terrorist attack on Pan
Am 103 several years ago.
So far, the administration
has refrained from any overt
effort to aid Syria, in part
because of strong signals
from Capitol Hill that arms
sales or direct economic aid
would be resoundingly re-
jected. But some legislators

suspect a more subtle
strategy.
One indication of where
the administration is going
was the muted reaction to
the news that Syria is get-
ting between $2 and $3
billion in new arms, in-
cluding advanced Scud mis-
siles, from China and North
Korea, with the funding
coming from this country's

Congress is
beginning to take
some steps to head
off the perceived
administration tilt
toward the
Damascus
government.

chief ally in the Gulf crisis,
Saudi Arabia.
According to some
observers, this lack of re-
sponse suggests an indirect
American complicity that
could be one of the payoffs
for Syria's minimal par-
ticipation in the anti-
Saddam struggle.
"Getting $3 billion from
Saudi Arabia is the same as
getting it from us," said
Shoshana Bryen, director of
the Jewish Institute for Na-
tional Security Affairs.

"What we seem to be telling
them is, 'we'll stop bothering
you about Pan Am 103, and
we'll let the Saudis take care
of you in terms of money,
and we'll ignore the new
weapons you're buying.' "
She said the U.S. is mak-
ing the same mistake with
Syria that it made with Iraq
in the past.
Rep. Larry Smith (D-Fla.)
is concerned that the ad-
ministration is developing a
"de-facto relationship" with
Syria, "and we are in effect
ceding Lebanon to Syria.
"I think we need to be con-
cerned about what were the
unspoken and unwritten
understandings when the
administration was trying to
keep Syria in the coalition. I
think there's definitely more
here than meets the eye."
Mr. Smith has turned his
sights on a shipment of U.S.
military spare parts to Leb-
anon earlier in the year — a
transfer that could be part of
a roundabout effort to pay
some past-due political bills
with the Syrians.
The non-lethal equipment
was ordered -in the 1980s,
but it was not delivered be-
cause of a 1987 cutoff in
weapons sales to Lebanon.
Mr. Smith says he has un-
covered documents in-
dicating a resumption of

L_ URI E'S VVccoF=IL_

ai

( (tqfAiliEN12111:

SYRIA'S ASSAD

DO

DAMN gut uil

IRAN'S

'.7191bli,Th:

RAFSANJANI

"Trost me, fellow Americans: I made no promises - so tar."

delivery in January, in the
middle of the Gulf war.
"Most of us realize that
Lebanon is still under the
full control of Syria,"
Mr. Smith said. "We have
every indication that the
Syrians have not pulled
back; every Lebanese army
unit has a Syrian unit
attached. If that's the case,
this equipment would
almost certainly end up in
the hands of the Syrians."
Congress is beginning to
take some steps to head off
the perceived administra-
tion tilt towards the
Damascus government. A
recent proposal by Rep.
Wayne Owens (D-Utah) to

link any future aid to Syria
to changes in that country's
emigration policies became a
magnet for congressional
concerns about the shadowy
U.S.-Syrian relationship.
Mr. Owens' resolution,
attached to the foreign aid
authorization bill, was stret-
ched to add new roadblocks
to any direct U.S. aid to the
Assad government. The
expanded amendment, if ac-
cepted, would require recog-
nition of Israel and an end to
Syrian sponsorship of terror-
ism, as well as significant
changes in Syria's human
rights policies, as precondi-
tions of any kind of Ameri-
assistance. ❑

states, the Soviet Union and
Yugoslavia have diplomatic
relations, though not at full
ambassadorial level, with
Israel.

She added that Ms. maga-
zine does "not agree or dis-
agree" with the women's
decision to use "Palestine "
on the masthead.

Is This Listing
A Ms.take?
- New York — Ms. , the New

Forest Recalls
Polish Jewry

ROUND UP

Think You've
Seen Everything?

And now, from the you've-
got-to-see-them-to-believe-
them school of press releases,

To protect the innocent,
certain details and the
names of the groups in-
volved have been changed.
Let's call them Jewish
Organization X and Jewish
Organization Y. These two
national or international
groups (they are not from
Detroit) actually sent these
press releases to The Jewish
News (and, presumably,
other Jewish newspapers
throughout the United
States). Here, for your
reading pleasure (?):
1) "To rescue an over-
weight teen-ager who sprain-
ed his ankle during a
hike in a canyon, a Jew-
ish Organization X team
tenaciously carried the in-
jured youth through a
narrow valley on a stretcher

for six hours . . .When the
Organization X team arriv-
ed at the scene, they found
the teen-ager with a sprained
ankle. They immobilized the
ankle, lay the youth on a
stretcher and then, due to
the steepness of the slopes,
carried him the length of the
valley over rocky ground
covered by dense vegeta-
tion."
2) "Jewish Organization Y
became the first Jewish
organization to support the
plan for distributing con-
doms in New York City
schools . . ."

Albania Seeks
Ties To Israel

New York — The Albanian
government has been in
touch with Israeli officials to
initiate the process of estab-
lishing diplomatic relations
between the two countries,
the World Jewish Congress
reports.
WJC representatives said

they were told the formal
announcement on diplo-
matic links between the two
countries will be made short-
ly.
The exchange of ambas-
sadors between Albania and
Israel would leave only the
Vatican among European
states without any diplo-
matic ties to the Jewish
state.
Albania, which last month
renewed diplomatic ties with
the United States after a 40-
year break, is home to
several hundred Jews. A
number of Albanian Jews
recently made aliyah.
Among other European

York-based magazine for
women, lists among its
international advisers Rita
Giacaman of "Palestine."
The listing can be found
with the names of the
publisher and editors on the
masthead near the front of
the magazine.
A spokesman for Ms. said
the inclusion of "Palestine"
was not meant to be a polit-
ical statement, but rather a
"show of solidarity" between
Ms. Giacaman and Rachel
Ostrowitz, who represents
Israel on the magazine's
board of international ad-
visers. The two women
wanted to show "solidarity
with women everywhere."

.

New York — The Jewish
National Fund and the Fed-
eration of Polish Jews of the
United States announce a
campaign to establish the
Polish Jewry Memorial
Forest, a memorial of 3 mill-
ion trees for the 3 million
Polish Jews who perished in
the Holocaust.
A JNF certificate will be
issued for each tree planted,
listing the names of the do-
nor and those memorialized.
For information, contact the
JNF national tree order
hotline, 1-800-542-TREE
(8733) or the local JNF of-
fice, 557-6644.

Compiled by
Elizabeth Applebaum

THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS

11