-Caveat Lector- WJPBR Email News List [EMAIL PROTECTED] Peace at any cost is a Prelude to War! Signs of instability in Syria Damascus’ old guard ruling elite at odds with Assad? ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- Editor's note: DEBKAfile's electronic news publication is a news-cum-analysis live wire, online round the clock seven days a week. A weekly edition, DEBKA-Net-Weekly, is now available through WorldNetDaily.com. Drawing on DEBKAfile's unique sources, analytical talents and forward-looking insights, it is presented as a compact, intelligence-angled weekly package. It is available as a direct e-mail feed or via the Internet. © 2001 WorldNetDaily.com Syrian President Bashar Assad's visit to Berlin this week as the guest of German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder represented some fateful days for the Middle East. DEBKA-Net-Weekly's sources report Israel is carefully observing signs of conflict between Assad and Syria's old guard ruling elite – a conflict that might mean there is potential for a breakthrough in establishing peace talks with Damascus. Israel's two air strikes against Syrian radar stations – on the Beirut-Damascus road in April and in central Lebanon last month – fit in the framework of these observations, reports DEBKA. By sending the planes into action after Hezbollah guerrilla attacks on Israeli army positions on the Lebanese border, Israeli Prime Minister Sharon tried to deliver two messages. The first was a heavy hint to Assad of the kind of damage the Syrian army could expect to suffer in Lebanon and back home if Israel began to attack Syrian military targets. The second was an attempt to weaken the position of the veteran Syrian leadership circle held over from Hafez Assad, who died 13 months ago, when his son Bashar took over. Sharon thought he spotted differences between the behavior and response of the Syrian president and those of the Damascus old guard. He believed there was a chance that Assad would try to break free from the clutches of Defense Minister Mustafa Tlas, Chief of Staff Hikmat Shihabi, Vice President Abdel Halim Khadam and Foreign Minister Farouq a-Shara. The road sign Sharon thought he saw flashing was not political or military, but economic. Sharon read the intelligence reports that landed on his desk from Damascus which said that in the past few months, this select group of Syria leaders, fearing they would lose their positions of influence, had blocked every attempt by Assad to carry out economic reforms and modernization. The reports spoke of extremely tense relations between the president and the old leadership. A breakthrough to the diplomatic track became a central pillar of Sharon's policy in the past several weeks. Getting political circles in the United States and Europe talking about an imminent resumption of Israeli-Syrian peace negotiations would relieve some of the pressure on Sharon to start discussions with the Americans and Palestinians on implementing the Mitchell report in the face of ongoing Palestinian terrorism. It also would enable him to continue his policy of military restraint toward the Palestinians, which cuts several percentage points off his popularity rating each week and puts them in the basket of his strongest political rival, former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is constantly breathing down his neck. Moreover, foreign focus on the Syrian track would relieve Sharon of the yoke of his political dependence on Shimon Peres, who has opposed the Syrian option since the 1993 Oslo accords, believing, quiet rightly, that it shunts aside the Arafat-Palestinian option. Rebuilding the Syrian channel was so important to Sharon that he requested and received U.S. approval for the move, first in his White House talks with President George W. Bush in June and then during U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell's visit to the Middle East. Sharon's hopes were bolstered by Assad's visit to Paris in mid-June. DEBKA-Net-Weekly's sources in Paris say that although Assad presented a tough, uncompromising line in his one-on-one talks with French President Jacques Chirac – refusing to listen to a word about resuming negotiations with Israel – he took a completely different tack in his meeting with French Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, emphasizing the need for Syria to rebuild its economy. A country that builds a new economy, Assad told Jospin, has no time for useless wars. Assad did not tell Jospin that renewed talks with Israel would be the next step down the line, but even without that commitment, he sounded upbeat. After meeting Jospin, Assad took another unconventional step. He made a point of responding to questions from Israel Radio's correspondent in Paris. In his answers, he included the phrase that Syria was always interested in resuming political negotiations with Israel. In assessing the differences between what Assad told Chirac and what he said to Jospin, U.S. and Israeli analysis point out that Assad – who is trying to get his late father's cronies off his back – is aware of their long-standing political and business ties with the French president and the French power elite that supports him. Assad knows that every word he uttered to Chirac gets back to his leadership rivals in Damascus. Conversely, Assad apparently studied carefully intelligence reports from the Syrian embassy in Paris on the eve of his visit and learned that many of those who pull the political strings in Paris believe that recent financial scandals, and the legal moves accompanying them, have taken a big bite out of Chirac's political power. Hardly anyone in Paris now thinks he will win re-election. Despite this, many in the know in Paris believe that Jospin will be France's next president. Since Jospin has no connection with the veteran political establishment in Syria, and even fewer ties with Arab leaders in the Middle East, Assad felt free to express his real opinions to him and send signals via the prime minister to the Americans and Sharon. That was why Sharon, who came to Paris a week earlier on July 5 for a short visit that lasted just a few hours, spoke at more length with Jospin than with Chirac. But the Syrian old guard cannot be written off. DEBKA-Net-Weekly's sources in Damascus say that these moves have not escaped the attention of a veteran group of politicians and senior officers. They have taken two opposing, but cynical and effective, routes to block their president's moves. The old guard has turned to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and Iran's spiritual leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. DEBKA-Net-Weekly's sources in the Persian Gulf report that the Syrian leadership asked Saddam Hussein to take military steps that would force Assad to implement the secret agreements he signed last September with the Iraqi president. In addition the Syrians requested and received permission from Saddam to open, on the eve of Assad's departure for Berlin, a Syrian bureau of economic cooperation with Iraq in Baghdad. That was the real reason behind the sudden movement of Iraqi military forces, starting from mid-June, in the Syrian desert in northern Iraq. At first the Americans and Israelis assumed the forces aimed to attack strongholds of pro-Western Kurds. When the assault never came, it became clear the Iraqi troops movements were linked to joint maneuvers with the Syrians and acting jointly with him in the event of the outbreak of a new Middle Eastern war. DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military sources say that after the Iraqi troop movements began, Saddam called Assad and told him the time was ripe for him to fulfill his part in the military agreements. The Iraqi ruler said Syrian headquarters and communications systems should begin to cooperate with their Iraqi counterparts, otherwise he would be forced to consider stopping the transfer of Iraqi oil through Syria (in essence, the smuggling of Iraqi oil above the amounts permitted under the U.N. oil-for-food provisions). These transfers recently reached a record 250,000 barrels per day, pouring $1.75 million into Syrian coffers daily. Assad had no choice, and gave permission for Syrian army chiefs to begin the joint exercise. The Syrian old guard, meanwhile, also asked Iran's spiritual leader and strongman, Khamenei, for initiatives in Lebanon to offset some of Iraq's steps in the east. They were not talking about big steps, such as the movements of Iraqi armored divisions and fighter plane and bomber wings. All the Iranians had to do was send a small number – no more than 25 – of intelligence and explosives instructors to south Lebanon to spend the summer training Hezbollah units deployed along the Israel-Lebanon border. They were to join several dozen Iranian instructors who arrived in south Lebanon in June 2000, several weeks after the Israeli army pulled out. Lebanese sources connected with European media leaked the arrival of the Iranians in south Lebanon. Top headlines then spoke of the presence of elite Iranian units in south Lebanon, equipped with short-range Frogger surface-to-surface missiles, who were prepared to attack Israeli targets. The Syrian old guard was aware Assad is very sensitive to the question of the Iranian presence in south Lebanon. He is convinced their real aim is not to support Hezbollah and the Shi'ites, but to follow a hidden agenda to establish a Shi'ite state in Lebanon that would give Iran free access to the Mediterranean. Such access would represent a very important change in Iran's strategic position in the region, transforming the Islamic republic from a Persian Gulf power to one with a presence in the Mediterranean. That would reduce Syria's importance in the eastern Mediterranean. The veteran leadership in Syria estimates that the Iranian military movements in Lebanon and the effect they will have internationally will push Assad back into Saddam's arms. That was their cold and cynical tactical assessment – one that was also sophisticated, effective and accurate. When Assad left this week for his trip to Berlin, he was accompanied by Syrian Foreign Minister Farouq a-Shara. DEBKA-Net-Weekly 's sources in Damascus report that Assad did not want to take the foreign minister with him, but was forced to do so by the old guard. In Berlin, unlike in Paris, Assad refused to answer any questions from the Israeli press. On Tuesday, July 7, Sharon tried to salvage something of the crumbling Syrian option. A few hours before Assad arrived in Berlin, he traveled to the Golan Heights and declared before a smattering of people who came out to hear him that he was prepared to negotiate with Syria with no pre-conditions. But he said in the same breath that there could be no peace with Syria if Israel had to evacuate all its settlements on the Golan. But there was no one left in Damascus or Berlin to hear Sharon's message. 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