IRAQ: Syria's foreign minister, Walid Moallem, arrived in Baghdad yesterday seeking to end his country's poor relations with neighbouring Iraq and to help find a solution to its growing chaos.
In Washington, the independent study group under James Baker is expected to call for the US to end its efforts to isolate Damascus and to seek its help over Iraq. British prime minister Tony Blair recently sent a top adviser to Syria with the same goal.
Former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger said yesterday it was impossible for the US to achieve victory in Iraq. "If you mean by clear military victory an Iraqi government, that can be established and whose writ runs across the whole country, that gets the civil war under control and sectarian violence under control . . . I don't believe that is possible."
Mr Moallem's visit to Baghdad marks another step in Syria's enhanced regional role. He is likely to restore diplomatic relations broken in 1982 when Syria took Iran's side in the war with Iraq. Syria denounced the US invasion of Iraq, and Washington accuses it of turning a blind eye to Arab jihadists infiltrating Iraq, a charge Damascus denies.