On Meet the Press Sunday, Secretary Rice acknowledged that the Syrian government has apparently ignored the warning President Bush delivered in his recent speech at the National Endowment for Democracy. She stated:
What we have focused on is getting a Syrian — getting the Syrian regime to change its behavior. The Syrian regime is out of step with what is going on in the region. And, Tim, this is not a problem between the United States and Syria; this is a problem in which the Syrians have caused destabilization in Lebanon through their presence there for 30 years, and they finally now are out. But the question is: Are they fully living up to their obligations under Resolution 1559, which we co-sponsored with the French, to not destabilize Lebanon, to not sanction assassinations in that region? They are stirring up difficulties in the Palestinian camps in Lebanon, which is a problem for the Palestinian territories and the work that Mahmoud Abbas is trying to do in bringing a Palestinian state to bear. And yes, they are permitting the use of Syrian territory for terrorists to cross Syrian territory. And by the way, in many cases they’re coming through Damascus airport. This isn’t crawling across the border, as they do in Pakistan or Afghanistan. And so yes, they’re using — that territory is being used to kill innocent Iraqis, innocent men, women and children, because suicide bombers are coming through there. So this is about Syrian behavior. I think we will see over the next couple of weeks that we will have to address these issues in a multilateral fashion because the reports that are coming out on UN resolutions about Lebanon are going to have to be dealt with, and we will see what that means for Syrian behavior.
