Exclusive: Syrian President Says He Can Help Broker Peace If U.S. Will Talk

ABC News' Diane Sawyer Talks Exclusively to President Bashar al-Assad About Iraq and Mideast Peace

Feb. 5, 2007 — - Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, a 41-year-old doctor, is the son of the legendary Syrian leader Hafez al-Assad, who negotiated with five American presidents.

Many in diplomatic circles believe that this quiet man may be the best hope for the United States to broker peace with insurgents in the Middle East.

Assad told ABC News' Diane Sawyer that he was ready to talk to the United States, but that it must be in public -- and that because the situation was so dire, the time to talk was now.

So far, the administration has refused to engage in talks with Syria.

Below is the transcript of Sawyer's exclusive interview with Assad.

Watch "Good Morning America" Tuesday for more of Diane Sawyer's report from Syria.

Sawyer: Your excellency, thank you so much for letting us come.

Assad: You're most welcome Miss Sawyer here.

Sawyer: There are a chorus of voices in the United States saying that talking to Syria is the way to end the war in Iraq. Can you stop the violence in Iraq?

Assad: First of all, the problem in Iraq is political, and talking to Syria as a concept means talking to all the other parties inside Iraq and outside Iraq. We're not the only player. We're not the single player, but we are the main player in this issue, and our role is going to be through supporting the dialogue between the different parties inside Iraq with the support from the other parties like the Americans and the other neighboring countries and any other country in the world. So that's how we can stop the violence.

Sawyer: Are you waiting to hear from the Americans? Why not begin it now?

Assad: We are hearing, but we don't expect that much. We don't expect that they're going to. After nearly four years of occupation they haven't learned their lesson, they haven't stopped the dialogue. I think it's too late for them to move toward that.

Sawyer: Too late?

Assad: That does not mean we cannot turn the tide, but it's too late because Iraq is heading toward the chaos for civil war. So maybe this is the last chance that we have now to start helping Iraq.

'What's the Benefit of Democracy When You're Dead?'

Sawyer: The Americans, of course, would say that they are not the occupying force, that they are in fact a force trying to regain security so that American forces can go home.

Assad: Militarily, yes. But politically, no, because they are responsible for the political situation and they haven't embarked any policy inside Iraq here. They only talk about sending more troops or less troops. They only talk about troops and power, not about political process.

Sawyer: Because Americans would say they voted, they now have the beginning of democracy there.

Assad: What's the benefit of democracy if you're dead? Now after the war, more than 700,000 Iraqis were killed. So is it democracy for killing or for having better standard of life? For starvation? For insecurity? For all this? So democracy is a tool to have a better life.

Sawyer: What would happen? Then talks take place.

Assad: Yeah.

Sawyer: You, Iran, the neighboring countries?

Assad: Yeah.

Sawyer: So the influence of the neighboring countries can create a cease-fire?

Assad: Yes, this is something mainly that they don't understand. It doesn't matter how strong economically or what army you have, it's a matter of credibility. We have credibility. We have good relations with the other factions. They should trust you to be able to play a role.

We have this good relations with all the parties, including the parties participating in this government and the other who oppose this political process. So that's how we can help. As Syria. Maybe other countries as well.

Sawyer: You are reported to have said, when American congressmen came here before the war in Iraq, "You will ultimately lose." … That you said, "You will win the war but you will sink in a swamp."

Assad: Exactly. That's what I said -- many times to many Americans and to the British officials: There is no doubt you are going to win the war, but after the war, you are going to be sinking in the mud, and nobody can help you. You are going to help us people to extract us from the quagmire, but it's going to be very difficult. And events proved that what we said in Syria was right.

Sawyer: On the current course, what do you think will going to happen next in Iraq?

Assad: Next? Whether it's a budding civil war or a full-blown civil war, it doesn't matter what the definition. It's like domino effect, it's going to affect the whole Middle East in general, and this means it's going to affect the rest of the world.

Sawyer: One of the things that Americans have been told is that Syria wants to fuel the fire and then put the fire out at the same time. And we are told that one of the reasons that there are violent insurgents in Iraq is that they're able to come through 376-mile border and that you give permission for terrorists to come down through the border into Iraq.

Assad: First of all, they have to stop looking for scapegoats and whipping boys, this administration. And there's a logical answer: We cannot stoke the fire and then extinguish it. If you stoke it, it will burn you. So if we have this chaos in Iraq, it will spill over to Syria and to other countries, so saying this, like saying that the Syrian government is working against the Syrian interest, this is impossible.

We have a guard, a special border guard, since 1975, and we supported this guard recently to make more control. But this is not enough. You need Iraqi or American partner on the other side.

Sawyer: But in America they believe that you are all powerful, and you say the word and the border will stop.

Assad: Powerful is different from being omnipotent -- power that you can control everything completely. You cannot control your border with Mexico, can you? You're the greatest power in the world, you cannot control it with Mexico, so how do you want Syria to control its border with Iraq?

'Administration. … Not Interested in Peace at All'

Sawyer: Did you watch the execution of Saddam Hussein?

Assad: Yeah. … I watched it. And, uh, you want to know my opinion? Actually, I can not give you personal opinion, because now I'm speaking formally and I have to be of the opinion of the government. We didn't take any stand against it, but he's a war prisoner. How could the Americans hand him over to another authority, which is not independent? So how could the trial be or called or described as fair and independent? This is a legal point of view.

Sawyer: Some have written in America that rulers in this part of the world look at Saddam Hussein and say, "That could be me, I'm next."

Assad: Because there's no rules, and there's no law and there's no independence, anybody could be next -- not only by the execution, but by killing in general. When you talk about next, every day in Iraq you have dead people, you have explosions, you have killing. So it's going on anyway, so anybody could think that he's next whether by execution or whether it's by assassination or by suicide bombers.

Sawyer: After Sept. 11, Syria was very helpful to the United States, we are told, in supplying intelligence about terrorism in the world. Do you know now where Osama bin Laden is? Is he alive?

Assad: We don't know. If you don't know, how could we know? You have all this intelligence so we're.

Sawyer: Are you ready to resume terrorism information to the United States?

Assad: We used to think that it's like the Internet, it doesn't have borders. It hits anywhere. So what hits in the West or the East, someday will hit in the Middle East. So we have to, and we are willing to cooperate with the rest of the world regarding terrorism.

Sawyer: When I was here before and I interviewed your father and I asked him about then-President [George H.W.] Bush. And he said to me, "President Bush is a man who feels he wishes to achieve peace and is seriously attempting to bring that wish to life."

Sawyer: Describe the current President Bush to me in your view.

Assad: I'd rather give objective view. … I've never met him personally to describe him, but what I know about this issue that this administration, in general, are not interested in peace at all. This administration is not willing to achieve peace. They don't have the will, and they don't have the vision. This is, in brief, what I know about this administration not about the president in particular.

Sawyer: Who do you admire the most in the world?

Assad: That's a very difficult question. The prophets, all the prophets. The three prophets -- Moses, Jesus and, of course, Muhammad.

Sawyer: And is there anyone operating on the world stage today that you admire? Any leader, any diplomat?

Assad: Maybe Bush, the father, because of his will to achieve the peace in the region. Of course, President Clinton, he has the same will, and he is admired in our region and respected.

Sawyer: And, Mrs. Clinton?

Assad: I've never met her. I don't know a lot about her.

Sawyer: So you're not endorsing her for president?

Assad: We'll see if she becomes president. … We'll see what her polices are.

Copyright © 2007 ABC News Internet Ventures

Help, he wants peace!

By Zvi Bar'el

In one of the news broadcasts that he presented last week on Channel 1 television, Haim Yavin defined the Syrian feelers as an "escalation in the peace attack," no less. No one could better describe the panic that Syrian President Bashar Assad is arousing in Israel. Attacks are something we understand, and escalation is also a user-friendly concept for Israelis. Therefore, it appears that peace has no meaning unless it comes in the form of an attack.

The alarmed and the perplexed are split into two groups. The first consists of those who are convinced that everything Assad does is aimed at advancing his own narrow interests: ridding Syria of the stigma of being a country that supports terror, luring investors to the country and freeing himself from pressure over the Lebanese issue. In other words, becoming a country like any other country. This group of believers forgets that these are precisely Israel's demands of Assad. But it wants eternal guarantees that after the Syrian president gets the Golan Heights back and no longer heads a country that supports terror, he will not turn on his heels and laugh out loud at the stupid Israelis. This is a reasonable demand, but it cannot be fulfilled before negotiations are actually held. Certainly such a demand cannot be a precondition.

The demand that Syria sever relations with Iran is also a deal-breaker. Israel did not demand this of Turkey, or of the leaders of the Islamic republics that broke away from the Soviet Union, when it signed peace treaties with them. It will also not demand this of Saudi Arabia, if and when a peace agreement is signed with that country. And how is it possible to explain Syria's willingness to sign a peace agreement with Israel when its relations with Iran are so close? According to the alarmists, this is of course another lie, or at least part of a nefarious plot. Therefore, it is not superfluous to ask why Iran has not reacted to Syria's feelers toward Israel, just as it is possible to wonder why Iran is not demanding that Turkey cease doing business with Israel. The answer lies in a mosaic of interests that goes far beyond the simplistic definition of the "axis of evil" or the division of the world into Shi'ites and Sunnis.

The precondition that Syria close the bases of Palestinian organizations such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad is especially interesting. If the headquarters of these organizations are fated to live outside the territories, would it not be better for them to operate from a country that has a peace agreement with Israel, instead of being expelled to a hostile country from which they can operate as they please?

The second group of alarmists offers the learned argument that Assad cannot mean real peace, because such a peace would topple him, his regime and his minority sect, which controls the country. Alternatively, spokesmen for this group take refuge in the assessment that even if there is peace with Syria, it will undoubtedly be a very cold peace. They are forgetting that the younger Assad has already proposed peace, while the elder Assad already held discussions with Israel and obtained concessions and even talked about normalization. Is Bashar Assad risking more now than ever before? One can confidently assume that an improvement in Syria's economic situation in the wake of an agreement with Israel, as well as the return of the Golan Heights, would do wonders for Assad's standing.

There is nothing wrong with Assad currently wanting to advance "only" Syrian interests. This is precisely the motivation for which Israel should be looking. If peace with Israel serves his interests, it would be wise to set up a table somewhere and sit negotiators around it - people who would pull out what was concluded with Yitzhak Rabin and Ehud Barak and tell Assad: This is where we are continuing from, and here is our list of new demands.

Assad's intentions are not a matter for trust or faith, nor for prior examination. Rather, they are a matter for negotiations whose sole aim is to reach peace with Syria. Only in this way will it also be possible to shake off the profound self-righteousness that holds that "we" owe it to our fighters and our homeland at least to try. It is not trying that is needed here, but rather action and achievement. Similarly, the main consideration cannot be how we will look to the world if we refuse to negotiate with Assad, but rather how life in Israel will look if we respond in the affirmative.

Olmert is rejecting Hanukkah miracle from Syria

Olmert's Hanukkah miracle

By Israel Harel

Since the Lebanon fiasco, the ground has been shaking beneath Ehud Olmert's chair. He did manage to thwart the demand to establish a state commission of inquiry, but even the Winograd Committee may mark him as the bearer of supreme responsibility for the failures that caused Israel to lose a war for the first time in its history. To survive the political and military failure and the entanglements of the investigations, Olmert knows - and the precedent set by Ariel Sharon proves - that the path of making territorial concessions is his only hope for saving himself from ousting and perhaps a trial. Only by making additional sacrifices in this area will he reach the protected status of "etrog," as the media called Sharon.

This means that every failure will be forgiven, every shady deal laundered, every file closed. If Sharon was absolved retroactively for the sin of Lebanon and the sin of creating the settlements merely by proposing to uproot Jewish communities, all the more will Olmert, who does not bear the burden of even one-hundredth of the reasons for which Sharon was hated and persecuted in Israeli politics, gain the approval of the country's media and legal system.

There is even a Hanukkah miracle, which could win him the validation of all the political and legal elements who are after him: Bashar Assad is calling, publicly, for direct talks with Israel. In contrast to the past, the Syrian leader says, without preconditions.

But in an incomprehensible and even surprising way, the beneficiary of the miracle, who should immediately have grasped that he has been given a one-time opportunity to extricate himself from his troubles, does not discern the miracle and rejects the proffered hand.

Never mind that the head of the Mossad, whose job it is to be suspicious - and who obviously also has information to support his suspicions, told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that "Assad is not really offering negotiations," or "the Syrians have preconditions." But for Olmert to reject, contrary to his survival instinct, dialogue with Assad because "first Syria's actions must be examined, not only its words"?

The declaration is surprising. If he responds positively to the Syrians, he will become the darling of the decision-makers, he will receive the status of etrog and will gain much political and legal time. What is he being asked to sacrifice, after all - the Golan Heights? If, as a graduate of the Betar movement, he is willing to give up most of Judea and Samaria to the Arabs, he will all the more not spare the Golan Heights.

This is unlikely to be the reason. Even his statement after his meeting with Tony Blair, and despite Blair's support of this line, is not persuasive: "Our demands are clear: (even before negotiations) Syria must stop undermining the Siniora government in Lebanon and stop supporting terror."

The prime minister received a hint as to the thoughts of those who have the power to decide his political or legal future, in a series of articles the line of which most of the media and the legal system usually toes: The main thrust is that Olmert should respond positively to the Syrian even if the U.S. is opposed, unless it turns out that this is a Syrian trick. Certainly from the perspective of these circles, there is no reason, if the maneuver turns out to be real, not to give the Syrians the Golan Heights and destroy the settlements. It is therefore entirely incomprehensible that this seasoned man does not take advantage of the most serious opportunity that has ever crossed his path to save his standing and his position and also, as with the Sharon precedent, to get rid of his legal troubles. Moreover, if the talks with the Syrians do get started, it is reasonable to assume that the Winograd Committee, like Menachem Mazuz with disengagement, will take the revolutionary political circumstances into consideration and not dare take responsibility for dismissing a prime minister at the height of peace talks with Syria.

The media, among whom Olmert has more personal friends than Sharon had, will certainly act this way. They will happily once again come to his aid after he has won the appropriate approval.
The accepted explanation, that American interests are the reason Olmert has not responded to the Syrians, is not convincing. In the past the Americans never came out against a move that led to Israeli withdrawal, even if they were surprised and taken aback by Israel's moves, as was the case at the beginning of the Oslo process - and subsequently, when the process was bogged down, they ardently demanded its implementation.

It is a clear American interest that Syria depart the axis of evil following receipt of the Golan. It is therefore reasonable to assume that in absolute contradiction to the public rejection of Assad's initiative, something significant is happening beneath the surface in the Israel-Syria arena. And to surprise us all, and thus increase the effect of the achievement, Olmert's and Livni's unconvincing declarations are being aired ("We must know when the opportunity is real and when it is only an image of one").

Then will the exaltation of the etrog, if the breakthrough is significant, be carried from the ends of the country to the ends of the earth.