| Finance Minister Mohammed al-Hussein has asked Washington to scrap its threat of sanctions against Commercial Bank of Syria over charges of financing terrorism, the ruling Baath Party's daily reported Tuesday. Al-Baath said the request was made in a meeting with a U.S. Treasury department delegation on the sidelines of a meeting in Bahrain on starting a Middle East agency to fight money-laundering and terror financing. "We asked the U.S. delegation for official guarantees on the annulment, not just a suspension, of the sanctions that were planned" against the state-owned bank, the finance minister told the newspaper. The Syrian delegation in Bahrain also called for U.S. assistance in developing Syria's banking and customs systems, and equipment to supervise the border with Iraq, Hussein said. |