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ウォールストリートジャーナルの下記貼り付け記事の最後の部分の概要。
ブッシュ政権が、アサド体制を葬る戦略を見いだしたというサインはない。さらに、あるアナリストたちは、シリア不安定化というアメリカの試みが、アメリカにとってましとはいえない新体制をつくることだけのことになることを恐れている。アサドへの対決姿勢は、もし取引で利益をえられないならば、リスクである。今のところ、ブッシュ政権は、アサドを信用していないといいつつ、そのようなことをする気にはなっていない。
(中略)
もしアサド体制が動揺するなら、続いて何がおきるかは不透明である。シリアの反体制派は、弱く、組織されていない。他方、シリアで最も組織されているのはイスラム教のグループで、とくに人口の三分の二以上からなるスンニ派に影響力がある。
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB112988132215575521.html?mod=home_page_one_us
Harsh Report From U.N.
Puts Pressure on Syria
U.S. Urges World to Ponder
'Accountability' for Charges;
France Could Play Big Role
By BILL SPINDLE
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
October 22, 2005; Page A1
DAMASCUS, Syria -- The United Nations probe implicating high-ranking Syrian officials in the killing of Lebanese leader Rafik Hariri could ignite a drive for international sanctions next week and pose the biggest challenge yet for the tight-knit Damascus regime.
The Syrian government denounced the report as full of "false accusations" aimed at weakening and embarrassing the nation politically. In Lebanon, where current and former government officials allegedly carried out the assassination, pro-Syrian President Emile Lahoud criticized the report as well. (See the full text of the report.)
U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan asked U.N.-appointed investigator Detlev Mehlis, who submitted the report Thursday, to continue investigating until mid-December. That ensured the klieg lights will remain on Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime until at least the end of the year.
For now, U.S. officials are responding with stern but vague hints of new international pressure on the Syrian government. "These are charges that will lead the international community to have to seriously consider how it demands accountability," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said yesterday.
Syria looms especially large in American foreign-policy thinking right now, and the question of how the country evolves is an important one for President Bush. U.S. officials believe Syria has added significantly to problems in Iraq by providing sanctuary for insurgents moving in and out of Iraqi territory to launch attacks on American forces and the fledgling Iraqi government. At the same time, Syria's regime stands squarely in the path of Mr. Bush's attempts to spread democracy and political reform across the Arab and Islamic worlds -- one reason the U.S. is eager to see Syria's influence wiped out in neighboring Lebanon.
U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton, long a vocal critic of Syria, said the U.S. was contemplating "various contingencies" and would work with other members of the Security Council to determine what to do next. The Bush administration imposed sanctions on Syria in May 2004 for backing terrorism and failing to keep militants out of Iraq. So the effectiveness of any U.S.-led international sanctions drive would depend largely on other countries' efforts.
France, which had a leading role in pushing Damascus to withdraw from Lebanon, could have a big role here as well. Indeed, how far the French are willing to press Mr. Assad and his regime in the wake of the Mehlis report could largely determine the breadth of international pressure on Syria.
A French Foreign Ministry spokesman said France continues to confer closely with the U.S. on Syria issues but noted that "we also have other partners and so it's not an exclusively French-American matter. We must also work with our other partners on this question."
The U.S. and Syria have been at loggerheads for years over issues including Syria's support for violent Palestinian groups and Hezbollah in Lebanon and the country's failure to prevent Iraqi insurgents from operating in Syria. The U.S. and France led an international push to get Syria to end its three-decade occupation of Lebanon, which Mr. Assad ultimately carried out amid a hail of criticism after Mr. Hariri's assassination in February.
The Mehlis report, however, could provide the strongest lever yet for Syria's international critics -- led by the Bush administration and perhaps France -- to press Mr. Assad to change policies on a range of issues that could affect the entire Middle East region.
"We are on the doorstep of a very difficult and unique phase of pressures between Syria and the international community," said Akram al-Bunni, a former Syrian political prisoner and opposition figure.
Mr. Mehlis's report suggested Mr. Hariri was killed in a plot carried out by Lebanese security officials in close coordination with high officials in the Syrian intelligence services. Those named as playing a possible role included Assef Shawkat, head of Syrian intelligence and brother-in-law of President Assad.
Mr. Hariri, a billionaire construction magnate, was widely viewed inside Lebanon as symbolizing both Beirut's recovery from its vicious civil war, whose end he helped negotiate in 1990, and the growing opposition to Syrian control of the nation. He resigned as prime minister last fall when Damascus forced the Lebanese parliament to pass constitutional changes allowing President Lahoud to remain in office. At the time Mr. Hariri was killed, by a huge bomb aimed at his motorcade in downtown Beirut in February, he was planning a comeback to high office.
While the Mehlis report didn't implicate President Assad or his innermost circle, Mr. Mehlis said the regime failed to fully cooperate with the investigation and he accused Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk al-Sharaa of lying to investigators.
The U.N. Security Council on Tuesday takes up Mr. Mehlis's report in a special session to determine what should be done. Mr. Hariri's son Saad, who was elected to Lebanon's parliament and now leads his father's powerful parliamentary bloc, has requested that an international tribunal be set up to prosecute suspects in the killing.
Later in the week, U.N. envoy Terje Roed-Larson is scheduled to submit a report on the implementation of the Security Council resolution demanding Syria's withdrawal from Lebanon and the disarming of Syrian-supported militias like Hezbollah. Some Lebanese complain that while Syria has withdrawn troops, it continues to influence Lebanese affairs through close allies in the Lebanese government. Syria has denied this.
The Mehlis investigation has added to other factors bringing the U.S. and France together in a common cause. The French government, once a close friend of both the Lebanese and Syrian governments, has been an effective wedge between them in recent months. French President Jacques Chirac led efforts to remove Syria from Lebanon even before the Hariri assassination.
Along with the crucial role France could play in sparking international support to punish the Assad regime, Arab governments, a mainstay ally of Syria on most issues, will also be important. In criticizing Mr. Mehlis's report, Syrian leaders appealed to generally sympathetic Arab governments.
"The Bush administration wants to see the end of Arab nationalism with Syria," said George Jabbour, a Syrian lawmaker.
That argument has deflected past U.S. and other Western criticism of Syria, but it may be harder for Syria to win allies in the case of an assassination of an Arab leader, just as it was in the case of one Arab country occupying another.
The ruling Syrian regime was already under pressure with its forced withdrawal from Lebanon after three decades of occupation. That cost Damascus one of the last foreign-policy issues it has used to divert Syrians' attention from the nation's economic malaise. The Assad regime had worked with Saddam Hussein, but then came the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. In general, Syria has seen a steady deterioration in recent years of its role as a regional power with clout from Egypt to Saudi Arabia.
New international pressure on Syria could cause Washington to rethink its own strategy for dealing with Damascus, with which it has an increasingly tense relationship.
Furious that Iraqi insurgents have been operating from inside Syria, U.S. officials have quietly explored in recent months whether there is a way to precipitate a regime change in Syria, perhaps by increasing pressure on Mr. Assad or by somehow aiding his enemies. The Pentagon has been quietly pushing the White House for months for the right to extend the military's hot pursuit of Iraqi insurgents into Syrian territory from Iraq.
The fresh pressure of the Mehlis report might make the Syrian leader more inclined to heed American warnings to do a better job of shutting down his border to Iraq and squelching the Iraqi insurgents who operate out of his country. Last week, as the U.N. report approached, Iraqi authorities arrested a nephew of Mr. Hussein after he had been forced to leave Syria and return home. The Iraqis asserted that he had been financing the insurgency from his outpost in Syria.
[Hafez al-Assad]
There's no sign, though, that the Bush administration has found a plausible strategy for pushing aside the Assad regime. Moreover, some analysts fear that any American attempts to destabilize Syria might simply produce a new regime that isn't any better for the U.S.
There are also risks to a renewed confrontational push against Mr. Assad, especially if it doesn't come with interest in eventually cutting a deal. The Bush administration so far has been unwilling to do that, saying it doesn't trust Mr. Assad to deliver. The dynasty that Mr. Assad's father, Hafez Assad, built over decades before his death in 2001 is generally considered weakened and relatively isolated under the son Bashar Assad, but not in danger of falling.
Still, the Hariri killing and the Mehlis investigation have produced some unprecedented turns. Syria's powerful interior minister, Ghazi Kanaan, died two weeks ago by a gunshot to his head just days after being interviewed by Mr. Mehlis. Mr. Kanaan, who the Syrian government says killed himself, oversaw Lebanese matters for two decades. He was among the most powerful officials in the Syrian regime, a man some outsiders speculated might be capable of replacing Mr. Assad. Mr. Shawkat, who one witness in the report said played a role in the plot, is also seen as a regime insider whose power may almost rival Mr. Assad's.
Should Mr. Assad's regime falter, what could succeed it is unclear. Although Syrian opposition groups have shown new energy in recent days, they are weak and disorganized. Meanwhile, the most organized force in Syria may be Islamist religious groups, especially among the Sunni Muslims, who make up more than two-thirds of Syria's population.
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