DAMACUS, Syria — The Iraq Study Group report said what Damascus wanted to hear about the urgency for a change of U.S. policy in Iraq and the need to engage both Damascus and Tehran in Iraqi affairs to minimize, if not end, the rising sectarian violence. Speaking to Al-Jazeera television recently, Buthaina Shaaban, Syria’s minister of expatriate affairs, said that the report was a “very important step because it means ending this era of American meddling in the region and the U.S. occupation of Iraq.” Damascus has long objected to the presence of U.S. troops in Iraq, and it has [...]
MOSCOW — Under the leadership of the Justice and Development Party, Turkey has been drifting eastward in recent years — but not toward the Islamic world. Instead, disputes with European countries over Cyprus and other barriers to Turkey’s entry into the European Union, as well as continuing differences between Ankara and Washington over U.S. policy in Iraq, have helped launch a de facto Ankara-Moscow axis in Eurasia. The last decade has seen a weakening of the factors that have traditionally tied Turkey to the West. Turkish leaders no longer believe they need NATO’s support in an unlikely military confrontation with [...]
German Minister of Foreign Affairs, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, listened to the statement of his Syrian counterpart with a slight grimace on his face. “Syria has not isolated itself from the world,” Walid Muallem explained at the Damascus airport, “but rather certain states have isolated themselves from Syria.” This response to Steinmeier’s demand that Syria should play a “constructive roll” in the region makes clear that diplomatic involvement with Syria does not in itself represent a way out of the, in Steinmeier’s words, “difficult transitional phase” in the Middle East. The press conference with Muallem in the VIP section of the Damascus [...]
