{"id":553,"date":"2004-10-09T01:09:27","date_gmt":"2004-10-09T01:09:27","guid":{"rendered":"0"},"modified":"2006-09-28T12:08:49","modified_gmt":"2006-09-28T12:08:49","slug":"a_conversion_on_the_road_to_damascus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/?p=553","title":{"rendered":"A Conversion on the Road to Damascus?"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s time for good news…but if this is true, it’s more than good. From AP via Ha’aretz<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Syrian President Bashar Assad is offering to make peace with Israel and says he is ready to cooperate with the United States in stabilizing Iraq, a former senior State Department official said Wednesday.<\/p>\n

“Something is going on in Syria and it is time for us to pay attention,” said Martin Indyk, assistant secretary of state for the Near East and U.S. ambassador to Israel during the Clinton administration.<\/p>\n

In a three-hour meeting with the Syrian president last month in Damascus, Indyk said he detected a “clear change” in Assad’s views on a number of fronts.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

On peacemaking, Assad offered to hold talks with Israel without preconditions, Indyk said, and had made several overtures to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon that the latter rebuffed.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

but wait, there’s more…<\/p>\n

On the domestic side, Indyk said, Assad spoke “about the need to reform the government.”<\/p>\n

“It’s worth watching and it is worth testing,” Indyk said at a seminar at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution, of which Indyk is the director.<\/p>\n

Indyk said Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk al-Sharaa was not at his meeting with Assad, evidence the former American diplomat said that change was under way and that al-Sharaa “and others in the old guard are being systematically silenced.”<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

but wait, there’s still more…<\/p>\n

On Iraq, Assad “figured out he was on the wrong side” and has switched to cooperation with the U.S. occupation forces in the country, Indyk said.<\/p>\n

On support for terrorism, Assad was responding to U.S. demands by moving some leaders of militant Palestinian groups out of Damascus, Indyk said.<\/p>\n

Last month, Syria was praised publicly by Secretary of State Colin Powell for dismantling military camps in the hills near Beirut, Lebanon.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Libya, and now possibly Syria. Two mainstays of state support for terrorism, both possibly moving toward civilization.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Libya, and now possibly Syria. Two mainstays of state support for terrorism, both possibly moving toward civilization.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/553"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=553"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/553\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}