Optimism Over Warming Relations With US
Syria Media Report, 17-March-09
Optimism Over Warming Relations With US
Syria Media Report, 17-March-09
Syrian media outlets say they hope Washington’s tentative reengagement with Damascus will continue.
President Barack Obama’s decision to send Daniel Shapiro, a member of the National Security Council, and the acting assistant secretary of state, Jeffrey Feltman, to Damascus last week shows that the United States is serious about engaging with Syria, wrote Asad Abboud, editor-in-chief of the official newspaper Al-Thawra, on March 9.
“We are watching these developments with optimism,” he wrote.
“These are signs that the US is starting to realise how vital Syria is to their interests in the region. Our country deserves respect and the same full engagement that the Americans [have with] Israel and Lebanon.”
In the same newspaper on March 10, columnist Ali Nasrullah wrote that he believed that Syria and the US could bridge past differences as long as Washington backs Damascus’s efforts to regain control of the Golan Heights – Syrian territory which was taken by Israel during the 1967 war.
