Greater Syria Notion Guides Ba'thist Regime's Actions; Iran-US Deal Chances Remain Strong.

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BEIRUT - The actions of the Ba'thist regime in Damascus are still guided by the Greater Syria project which the late Hafez al-Assad  tried to revive after his 1970 military coup against the civilian wing of the Ba'th Party. In this project Palestine, Lebanon and Jordan are part of Greater Syria.

This was the project on which the late Assad based his "strategic" choice of making peace with Israel. He never expected to die so suddenly in June 2000; but he prepared for the eventuality by mak-ing sure that he was going to be succeeded by his first surviving son, Bashar.

Apparently this was the reason why the Damascus-based leadership of Hamas, the Islamist movement now in control of the Palestinian government, got large consignments of weapons and Katyusha rockets to be smuggled from Syria to Jordan. An arms cache was uncovered in April by the Jordanian intelligence network.

The proponents of the Greater Syria project of Damascus are clashing with the Iranian promoters of a "grand bargain" between the Shi'ite theocracy of Tehran and Washington. The chances of such a bargain remain as strong as the chances of military confrontation between the US and Iran.

However, the logic behind the promoters of the "grand bargain" is far more strong than the logic behind Greater Syria or a "super-Iran" emerging from real war against the US. The promoters of real war between Iran and the US are much weaker now than they had been before the US invasion of Iraq (see ood6-IraqSyriaJun12-06).

Jordan on May 14 told Hamas to send a team to find weapons it accused the Palestinian group of hiding on its soil as a first step to ending a crisis sparked by accusations of a bombing plot. Jordan rejected an offer made on May 13 by PA Foreign Minister Mahmoud al-Zahhar to travel to Amman for talks aimed at mending relations.

Jordan in April said it had seized Iranian-made Katyusha rockets and arrested 20 suspects in its probe into alleged plots by Hamas to carry out attacks in Jordan. It cancelled a visit by Zahhar after discovery of the arms cache which it claimed had been smuggled from Syria.

Spokesman Nasser Joudeh said: "The government wants the Palestinian government to send a security team which is in position to reveal more information [about the plot] and the location of the other arms caches which the security forces say still exist in Jordan. All this must happen before embarking in any political contacts with the Palestinian government in this phase".

Joudeh said that a visit by Zahhar was inappropriate until Hamas came clean over additional arms caches the authorities believed were hidden. Zahhar insists Hamas "poses no security problem in Arab countries and certainly not in Jordan".

Palestinian Authority (PA) Prime Minister Isma'il Haniya said he was surprised at the rejection of Zahhar's offer and insisted that settling the crisis could only come through political dialogue.

Haniya in Gaza said: "We are fully convinced that any meeting should be political in order to treat, discuss and look into the future of the relationship and not on the basis of accusations. We do not interfere in the affairs of any Arab country, and we regard the security of these countries as if it were the security of Palestine".

Both Tehran and Damascus denied as "baseless" the Jordanian allegations of supplying Hamas with weapons and helping the group smuggle arms to Jordan. Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told reporters: "Our co-operation with Palestine is humanitarian and spiritual support".

The Palestinian government refused to join a committee set up by PA President Mahmoud Abbas to investigate the case with Jordanian officials. On May 11, two of the Jordanian suspects arrested in April said on Jordanian TV they were recruited by operatives from the Damascus-based Hamas leadership. Lawyers and human rights groups say many confessions by political detainees are extracted under duress. This is true, but more true is the Greater Syria factor behind Ba'thist actions in Damascus.

A Palestinian security delegation led by Maj Gen Tareq Abu Rajab, head of Palestinian General Intelligence, on May 10-11 visited Jordan to investigate the evidence against the Hamas militants. The senior Palestinian diplomat in Jordan, Atta Khairy, said Gen. Abu Rajab was briefed on the facts and "shown evidence on the arms smuggling allegedly by Hamas activists". Hamas officials, along with the Syrian government, which hosts Hamas's exiled leadership, have denied the allegations since the cache's discovery.

Joudeh said the arrests took place in late April when police seized the weapons, including missiles and rockets, which Hamas members had stockpiled in various parts of the country. He said the seized arms included Iranian-made Katyusha rockets and light anti-tank weapons known as LAW missiles. He said the government suspected that more arms had been hidden but "not yet discovered", adding that Hamas had been seeking to "recruit elements to operate" in the kingdom as well as bring in activists from the Palestinian territories "to send them to Syria and Iran for training on intelligence, security and military activities".

Gen. Abu Rajab went to Jordan on behalf of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, not his Hamas-led government, which turned down a Jordanian request to send a delegation. His five-member team, including his deputy Tawfik Tirawi, held talks behind closed doors with top Jordanian security officers at the Amman headquarters of the General Intelligence Department. A Jordanian security official with close knowledge of the talks said the Palestinians were briefed on the "activities, plans and surveillance carried out by Hamas elements with the intent of threatening Jordan's national security".

The Islamic Action Front, Jordan's largest Muslim opposition group, has accused the government of exaggerating the arms discovery and bowing to US pressure to undermine the Palestinian government. Other opposition groups said the arms cache may have been destined for the West Bank but was being stockpiled in the kingdom awaiting safe passage across the border with Israel.

Gradually disclosing information about the plot, the Amman government said the Hamas militants were in the final phase of planning an attack on unspecified targets in the kingdom. It said they were under orders from a Hamas official in Syria.

Palestinian rejectionist groups firing Katyusha rockets against Israel from southern Lebanon are based in Damascus and activated by the Ba'thist regime in the Syrian capital. The Ba'thist regime is to still have thousands of secret agents in Lebanon. Leaders of the Ba'thist regime openly and repeatedly praise the anti-Israel "resistance" on Lebanese soil, while not a single shot has been fired from Syria on the Golan Heights (which Israel has been occupying since 1967) for many years - thanks to the Syria-Israel "Disengagement Accord" of 1974 which was brokered by then US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.