Syria's neighbors may help wedge it away from Iran

WASHINGTON — As Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice travels to Israel today, Bush administration officials say they recognize Syria is central to any plans to resolve the crisis in the Middle East, and they are seeking ways to peel Syria away from its alliance of convenience with Iran.

But senior administration officials, who requested anonymity, said there were no plans right now to resume direct talks with the Syrian government.

President Bush recalled his ambassador to Syria, Margaret Scobey, after the assassination of Rafik Hariri, a former Lebanese prime minister, in February 2005. Since then, America's contacts with Damascus have been few, and the administration has imposed an array of sanctions on Syria's government and banks and the assets of Syrian officials implicated in Hariri's killing.

But officials said this week that they were at the beginning stages of a plan to encourage Saudi Arabia and Egypt to make the case to the Syrians that they must turn against Hezbollah. "We think that the Syrians will listen to their Arab neighbors on this rather than us," said one senior official, "so it's all a question of how well that can be orchestrated."

That effort begins this afternoon in the Oval Office, where President Bush is scheduled to meet the Saudi foreign minister, Saud al-Faisal, and the chief of the Saudi national-security council, Prince Bandar bin Sultan. Bin Sultan was the Saudi ambassador to Washington until late last year and often speaks of his deep connections to both the Bush family and Vice President Dick Cheney.

Rice is delaying her departure to the Middle East until after the meeting, which she and Vice President Cheney are also expected to join, along with Stephen J. Hadley, the national-security adviser. The session was requested by the Saudis, U.S. officials said.

"We don't know how patient the Saudis will be with the Israeli military action," said one senior official. "They want to see Hezbollah wiped out, and they'd like to set back the Iranians." But in the Arab world, the official added, "they can't be seen to be doing that too enthusiastically."

"There is a presumption that the Syrians have more at stake here than the Iranians, and they are more exposed," one of the administration officials said.

The U.S. officials are calculating that pressure from Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan may help to get Syria on board.

But so far, there appears to be little discussion of offering U.S. incentives to the Syrians to abandon Hezbollah, or even to stop arming it.

The idea is to try to drive a wedge between Syria and Iran, who have recently been drawn closer together by standoffs with Washington. Syria and Iran have been formally allied since the Iran-Iraq war began in 1980, but historically they were suspicious of each other.

"Historically and strategically, they are on opposing sides — the Arabs and the Persians," Daniel Ayalon, Israel's ambassador to the United States, said in an interview on Thursday. Now, he added, "the only Arab country to ally with Iran is Syria," a position that has angered Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.

Syria, along with most of the Arab world, is largely Sunni. Iran and Iraq are largely Shiite. Some Middle East analysts say it is difficult to envision how the United States will manage to cobble together a lasting diplomatic solution to the current crisis without talking to Syria.

In 1996, when Israel and Hezbollah were also at war and bombs rained down on civilian populations, Secretary of State Warren Christopher spent 10 days shuttling between Damascus, Beirut and Jerusalem before brokering a cease-fire that got Israel and Hezbollah to agree to leave civilians out of the fighting.

Rice has said she has no intention of duplicating Christopher's approach. "I have no interest in diplomacy for the sake of returning Lebanon and Israel to the status quo ante," she said Friday.

Rather, the administration's declared aim is the implementation of U.N. resolution 1559, which calls for the disarming of Hezbollah and the deployment of the Lebanese army to southern Lebanon. Syria, which was forced to withdraw its troops from Lebanon last year, may well balk at efforts to enforce it.

While analysts say it is possible for the Bush administration and Israel to work out a diplomatic solution without including Syria, it would be difficult to do. Some administration officials, particularly at the State Department, are pushing to find a way to start talking to Syria again.