America Wants to Open New Chapter with Arabs

Political and information advisor to the Syrian Presidency, Bethina Shaban, has said that it appears that the American administration wants to open a new chapter with the Arab and Islamic world, as well as the entire world.

Shaban indicated in an interview with Syrian newspaper Al-Watan that the standstill in Arab-American relations was due to the previous American administration. It is natural when carrying out important state discussions to have had disagreements, she said, but President Bush’s administration built the foundation for, in her own words, maintaining wars.

Shaban confirmed that Syria would of course welcome and encourage this opening.

Responding to a question regarding whether the American ambassador would soon return to Damascus and repeal the Syrian blockade, Shaban said that it was very possible and nothing was preventing it. A sign of this is that they have been studying the possibility of money or medical contributions for cancer research coming from the United States to Syria.

She likewise mentioned reports advising that all measures taken with respect to Syria were illegal, even under American law. For example, restrictions on medicines and the changing of planes go against American law. So, it will not be difficult for this administration to abolish the measures taken against Syria because they were illegal to begin with.

Regarding the Syrian-Saudi conciliation, which was brokered in connection with the Kuwait Summit, she said that rebuilding relations between nations would not be completed in mere hours, but must cook over a low fire. She pointed to the necessity for dialogue and discussion on the issues where there were differing points of view until they could reach a shared understanding or agree to work together with their differences on some issues.

About her opinion of the future of Syrian-Lebanese relations five years after the assassination of the former Lebanese Prime Minister, she expressed that Hariri’s assassination was calculated to strike at Syrian-Lebanese relations, and these relations are a certain aspiration.