The Obama administration said today that it would gradually lift some American sanctions on Syria in an effort to repair diplomatic relations between them, reported The New York Times.
President Obama’s Middle East envoy, George J. Mitchell, spoke of this possibility on Sunday to President Bashar al-Assad of Syria in Damascus, Syria’s capital. Mitchell said the government would attempt to speed up the process of making exemptions on specific sanctions, which bans the exporting of American products to Syria, with the exception of food and medicine.
Such action would specifically impact shipping out “information technology and telecommunication equipment” as well as aviation parts intended for the “safety of civil aviation,” a State Department spokesman, Andrew J. Laine, told the Times.
While the president cannot alter the original language of the sanctions, which were first approved of by Congress in 2003 and cannot be changed without Congress’s permission, the White House could now receive requests by companies to sell goods to Syria if such changes are implemented.
The Obama administration is attempting to develop a rapport with Syria to sever the country’s connection to Iran and Islamic militant groups. An ambassador had not been sent out to Syria since 2005.
The president could make certain exceptions to the Syria Accountability Act, the official name of the sanctions, through the Commerce Department based on national security concerns. Under the Bush administration few exemptions were granted.
A move to ease sanctions, however, has already faced opposition in Congress.
Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida, the “ranking Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee,” has not believed that Syria should be pursued any differently.
“[I am] deeply troubled that the United States would make unilateral concessions to the Syrian regime and ease pressure on Damascus, even as the State Department recently reported to Congress that Syria continues to pursue advanced missile and chemical, biological and nuclear weapons capabilities and to sponsor violent Islamist extremist groups like Hezbollah and Hamas,” she said.
Representative Eliot L. Engel, a New York Democrat, who assisted in drafting the legislation, recognized that the exemptions could be legally made, but has remained skeptical of Syria changing its behavior and attitude.
Mitchell’s visit to Syria on Sunday was the second diplomatic trip he took there in two months. According to administration officials Mitchell and Assad discussed a possible meeting between Syria, the United States Central Command and Iraq in Damascus on working together to make the Syria-Iraq border less permeable to insurgents, a top goal of the Obama administration.
