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Syria: Bush fuelling Iraqi war
11/01/2007 19:14 - (SA)
Damascus - Syrian vice-president Faruq al-Shara said on Thursday US President George W Bush's decision to send 21 500 more American troops to Iraq amounted to nothing more than throwing oil onto the fire.
"Increasing the number of American forces in Iraq... is to throw oil onto the fire," said al-Shara.
"This is not a positive development... it is a question of bringing an end to the conflict, not continuing it," he said, adding that "a political solution is the only way out of this dangerous crisis".
In a prime-time speech late on Wednesday, Bush told a war-weary US public that he accepts the blame for strategic blunders in Iraq, and that he has decided to order another 21 500 American troops into battle to supplement the 132 000 or so already deployed there.
A Syrian government newspaper said the complexity of the situation means Bush's new security plan is bound to fail.
"The complicated situation in Iraq leads us to predict that the probability of the new Bush strategy failing is far stronger than its chance of success," the Tishrin daily wrote in an editorial.
'Iraqi situation catastrophic'
"The 20 000 (extra) soldiers to be deployed in Iraq cannot succeed where the 150 000 already on the ground for four years have failed."
The new US plan will cost $5.6bl for the extra troops and about $1.2bl in new spending aimed at shoring up Iraq's battered economy, civil society, infrastructure and judicial system, said the White House.
Tishrin said the extra money "will do nothing to alter the hard reality on the ground".
"President Bush, the main person responsible for the human and material catastrophe in Iraq, wants to try a strategy that has already failed," said the paper.
"The situation in Iraq is catastrophic - as is Bush's strategy. The people of Iraq will be the sole losers."
In his speech, the US president also promised to take aggressive steps to curtail what he described as Iranian and Syrian help to those attacking Iraqi and US troops.
He accused Iran and Syria of allowing terrorists to use their territory to enter and exit Iraq, and charged Tehran with giving "material support" for attacks on US troops.
Bush said: "We will disrupt the attacks on our forces. We will interrupt the flow of support from Iran and Syria. And we will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq."
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