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Regional states scramble to ward off Iraq action...
Syria and Iran support Turkey's proposal for a regional summit to seek a peaceful way out of the Iraq standoff. "Iran welcomes whatever summit at any level to resolve the Iraqi crisis," the Islamic Republic News Agency quoted spokesman Hamid-Reza Asefi as saying. "We will discuss the details of the summit with Turkey and Syria."Having something done about Iraq puts the U.S. in the position of being able to do something about Syria, Iran, and Soddy Arabia. With that much exposed, it has to be stopped at all costs... Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk al-Sharaa, who is visiting Iran, indicated Sunday that his government would go to the summit. Iranian state television quoted him as saying his country also was willing to host a meeting of foreign ministers of countries neighboring Iraq "that would precede a higher level summit in Turkey." "All this will take time, of course. Lots of time. So why don't you just take your Huge Armada® and go home? Okay?" Turkey has offered to hold the summit where Egypt, Iran, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Syria would discuss the standoff over Iraq. In Jordan, Foreign Minister Marwan Muasher has said only that Arab governments are assessing Turkey's summit invitation. Saudi Arabia, which has its own proposals on Iraq that it has not yet publicly outlined, has yet to respond to the Turkish invitation. They're waiting to see if their coup attempt works better than the one they had in Qatar... Posted by: Fred Pruitt 2003-01-19 |
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