Syria: Getting Serious?

The New York Times:

UNITED NATIONS, Oct. 30 - Security Council diplomats worked out final details on Sunday on a tough resolution against Syria, an action that will forcefully step up international pressure on the country's embattled president, Bashar al-Assad, and deepen his government's struggle to ward off increasing isolation.

Diplomats from the resolution's three co-sponsors, Britain, France and the United States, said they expected passage on Monday and did not foresee a veto from either China or Russia, the two countries most reluctant to punish Syria.

The resolution threatens Syria with economic penalties if it does not give full cooperation to the United Nations investigation that has identified high-ranking security officials as suspects in the assassination of a former Lebanese prime minister, Rafik Hariri.
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Casting the American vote on Monday will be Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the leader of the American diplomatic campaign to isolate Syria. She is joining foreign ministers from the other Security Council states in the higher-level "ministerial" meeting of the panel that the resolution's sponsors requested to give it added force.

The foreign ministers of the council's five permanent members - Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States - held a private dinner in New York Sunday at which the resolution was to be discussed.

Ms. Rice and other American officials have said they do not seek "regime change" in Syria but rather "behavior change." As an example, they point to Libya, where Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi decided in 2003 to admit the existence of his weapons programs, agree to dismantle them and thereby start to shed his country's pariah status.

To cope, Syria has reached out to the international community, including Arab leaders, trying with little success to promote the idea that it had nothing to do with Mr. Hariri's death. In that connection, Syria sent its deputy foreign minister, Walid al-Mualem, on a tour of Persian Gulf states on Sunday. On Saturday, President Assad said he would set up a commission to conduct Syria's own investigation into the assassination.

Althouh the New York Times reports Syria's quest for support met with "little success", an LA Times story indicates that may not be completely true - as "some Arab leaders" are urging caution:

The Bush administration has embarked on an effort to build strong international pressure on Syria despite warnings from some Arab leaders and Israelis that doing so could lead to a chaotic collapse or even the rise of a fundamentalist Islamic regime in Damascus, U.S. officials say.

American diplomats have been trying to enlist other nations to pressure Syrian President Bashar Assad as the United Nations weighs how to respond to an investigator's report implicating top Syrian officials in the February assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.
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But some Arab leaders and other allies say the Syrian government is already fragile and isolated. They have warned that international sanctions or other measures could topple the regime, destabilizing an important corner of the Middle East and possibly opening the way for Islamist groups such as the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood.

The outlawed organization, which is alleged by some to have ties to Al Qaeda, has been badly weakened by Assad's government and that of his long-ruling father, Hafez Assad. However, it still is widely considered to have the broadest base of support of any Syrian opposition group.

Syria has accused the United States of launching lethal military raids into its territory from Iraq, escalating the diplomatic crisis between the two countries as the Bush administration seeks to step up pressure on President Bashar Assad's regime.

Major General Amid Suleiman, a Syrian officer, said that American cross-border attacks into Syria had killed at least two border guards, wounded several more and prompted an official complaint to the American embassy in Damascus.

He made the allegations during an official press tour of Syrian security forces on the Iraqi border, which the US claims is a barely guarded passage into Iraq for hardcore foreign jihadis.

While showing off what he said were beefed-up Syrian border measures designed to blunt those criticisms, including new police stations and checkpoints, Maj Gen Suleiman alleged that his own border forces had come under repeated American attack.

"Incidents have taken place with casualties on my surveillance troops," he said, near the Euphrates river border crossing between Syria and Iraq. "Many US projectiles have landed here. In this area alone, two soldiers and two civilians have been killed by the American attacks."

Update: The resolution has been passed by the UN Security council - unanimously.

The U.N. Security Council voted unanimously on Monday in favor of a tough resolution demanding Syria cooperate with a U.N. probe into the death of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri or face possible punitive measures.

The resolution was adopted 15-0 after the principal drafters, the United States and France, agreed to delete a specific reference to economic sanctions. Instead the resolution would consider possible unspecified "further action" if Syria did not comply.