For almost three years, Syria has been in the diplomatic doghouse, shunned by the United States, disrespected by France, bombed by Israel and even scolded by its fellow Arab governments for cozying up to Iran.
But now, in the post-Annapolis let’s-make-peace-in-the-Middle-East world, the kitchen door may have cracked slightly open to allow Syria back in the house.
Bush administration officials, who usually have not been able to mention the word “Syria” without immediately following it up with “state sponsor of terrorism,” have started to sound conciliatory. Israel says it is willing to consider peace talks with Syria over the Golan Heights. And Arab neighbors went to the mat last week to persuade the United States to do everything it could to get Syria to attend the Annapolis peace conference.
What has changed?
“The event in Annapolis was designed to send one unmistakable message: that Arab-Israeli peace is open for business,” said Aaron David Miller, a public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington. “The pull here is the allure of the second track.”
The Sunni Arab states want to woo Syria, with its Sunni Muslim majority, from its alliance with largely Shiite Iran. For the Israelis, one potential benefit would be to play the Palestinians off against the Syrians while trying to negotiate peace with both.
And the United States? “Look, a handful in the Arab League were saying they could not attend the conference unless Syria was put on the agenda,” a senior Bush administration official said. “So we put Syria on the agenda. What did it cost us? Nothing.”
However, American and Israeli officials said the time was not yet ripe for real peace talks with Syria. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel will have enough to do trying to get skeptics to agree to give up settlements in the West Bank and to share Jerusalem with the Palestinians, compromises Israel will have to make if the peace track with the Palestinians has any chance of working.
Trying to get the 12,000 to 15,000 Israeli settlers out of the Golan Heights, in addition, would make an already hard job close to impossible, Israeli officials said, and make it far less likely for Israel to start separate talks with Syria soon. Mr. Olmert echoed that with reporters before he flew home Wednesday night. “Conditions are not yet at the point” for talks with Syria, he said. “There’s enough that we will have to do that will be heartbreaking.”
Over the past few months, the American relationship with Syria has been alternating between cold and lukewarm.
Officially, the United States considers Syria a state sponsor of terrorism, and the administration has struggled to isolate it as a strategy to have it change its policies. The United States withdrew its ambassador to Syria, Margaret Scobey, in 2005 after the assassination of Lebanon’s former prime minister, Rafik Hariri. Syria, which had troops in Lebanon at the time, has been implicated in the assassination, but has denied any involvement.
This April, the White House sharply criticized the speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, for visiting Damascus and meeting with President Bashar al-Assad, calling the trip “bad behavior,” in the words of Vice President Dick Cheney.
But one month later, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met with Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem of Syria in Sharm el Sheik, Egypt, in the first high-level diplomatic contact between Washington and Damascus in two years. Both sides described the 30-minute meeting as cordial, and Ms. Rice asked Mr. Moallem for Syria’s help to contain the flow of foreign fighters traveling through Damascus to Iraq.
Just a few months later, on Sept. 6, Israeli jets bombed a site in Syria. About three weeks after that, the United States announced it would invite Syria to the Annapolis conference.
When Syrian officials dallied about whether to show up, demanding that the Golan Heights issue be put on the agenda, Arab officials asked Ms. Rice to modify the agenda to something the Syrians could accept. Ms. Rice was on the phone more than 30 times between Nov. 21 and Nov. 25, administration officials said, talking to officials in the Middle East. She had more than 50 phone calls with C. David Welch, the assistant secretary of state for Near East affairs.
In the end, the United States agreed to formally put the Israel-Syria issue on the conference agenda. And Damascus sent its deputy foreign minister, Faisal al-Mekdad, to the conference. He told a closed session that Israel should pull out of the Golan Heights.
Sean D. McCormack, the State Department spokesman, sounded downright benign in describing Syria’s role at the conference. “It was positive that they decided to come to Annapolis, and taken as a whole, their comments were constructive,” he said.
Bush officials said Syria had gotten better about actively trying to stop the flow of foreign fighters through Damascus to Iraq, a key American demand.
Stephen J. Hadley, the national security adviser, said the ball was in Syria’s court.
“I think for Syria, there is a fundamental choice,” Mr. Hadley said during remarks on Wednesday night at a forum at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.
“Are they going to make a strategic decision, give up their support for terror, let Lebanon alone, support a new Iraqi government, rather than obstruct it and undermine it, and make a decision for peace?” he asked. “If they do, I think there are opportunities for them in the Golan Heights.
“The door is open to them.”
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