Egypt, Syria Restore Full Diplomatic Ties

Egypt and Syria declared the restoration of full diplomatic relations Wednesday, ending a 12-year break that began over Cairo’s peace initiative with Israel.

The move ends Syria’s self-imposed isolation from the Arab mainstream and, at the same time, caps Egypt’s restoration to Arab leadership. Speculation on the cause for the improved ties centered immediately on the Middle East peace process, in which Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has taken the lead in seeking a breakthrough for talks between the Israelis and Palestinian representatives.

In a joint communique issued in Damascus, Syria and Egypt said the decision was triggered by “current international developments and their expected impact on the Arab nation.”

Disclosure of the renewed diplomatic ties followed a two-hour meeting in the Syrian capital between Egyptian Prime Minister Atef Sedki and Syrian President Hafez Assad. The move promises to return Syria, longtime leader of the rejectionist Arab nations opposed to any negotiations with Israel, to the Arab mainstream.

“The ice between Egypt and Syria has vanished,” Sedki told a Damascus news conference shortly before the restoration was announced. “It has been decided to hold a summit between President Hosni Mubarak and . . . Assad during the first days of January.”

In the past two years, Mubarak’s government has won Egypt’s reinstatement in the Arab League and now has resumed relations with all Arab states except Libya. In addition, contacts between Cairo and Libyan dictator Moammar Kadafi have increased sharply in the past months.

“This reconciliation forms the sound basis for joint Arab action to safeguard the interests of the Arab nation and its peoples who are thirsty for progress,” the Damascus communique said.

“It is a pragmatic step on everybody’s part,” Egyptian political commentator Tahseen Bashir told Reuters news agency in Cairo.

Syria’s Assad, whose stubborn rejection of the peace process in the past had paid off as one plan after another failed, apparently has decided to deal from inside the Arab camp this time.

Analysts have also cited other reasons for the rapprochement between the two major military powers bordering Israel, whose relations turned sour after their alliance in the 1973 Arab-Israeli War. In Syria’s case, those reasons bore both on strength and weakness:

-- A stubborn Syria achieved its aims in September’s Arab League peace talks on Lebanon, achieving a settlement, at least on paper, that allows Syrian forces to remain on Lebanese soil under a formula that increases Muslim political power at the cost of Christian influence there. Egypt, which had initially supported the call of Syria’s archenemy Iraq for a complete withdrawal of Assad’s troops, changed course and backed the final formula, giving Damascus reassurance of its role in Lebanon and renewed influence in the region.

-- The emergence of Iraq as a regional power after its victory over Iran in a decade-long war had deepened the isolation of Syria, which with Libya was the only Arab supporter of Iran. That isolation was increased by the formation of various treaty organizations among other Arab nations, including last spring’s establishment of the Arab Cooperation Council, which bound the governments of Egypt, Iraq, Jordan and Yemen in an economic alliance with political overtones.

Syria, with its distressed economy, was left without alliance partners, dependent largely on its Soviet sponsors, who reportedly had tightened their military support over the past year.

Furthermore, the Damascus government was increasingly isolated internationally for providing sanctuary to Palestinian groups accused of terrorist activities.

However, as the first hints of Egyptian-Syrian rapprochement were disclosed in recent weeks, the focus fell on the Palestinian question.

Al Hayat, a London-based Lebanese daily, recently quoted unidentified American and Soviet diplomats as saying that renewed relations between Cairo and Damascus would permit direct Syrian involvement in a Washington-sponsored process to establish a dialogue between Israel and Palestinians over the future of the occupied territories.

Syria’s opposition to the dialogue, the U.S. diplomat was quoted as saying, may be transformed into “positive, practical opposition, interacting with the peace process rather than merely rejecting the dialogue without coming forward with alternative proposals.”

The Soviet source told Al Hayat: “We have always called for Arab solidarity and an end to polarization in the Arab world, especially now that the international polarization which has been a major factor in inter-Arab disputes is receding.”

Syria and Egypt were allies in arms in all the Arab-Israel wars through the 1973 conflict, but Damascus broke relations over the late Egyptian President Anwar Sadat’s historic 1977 visit to Jerusalem, which led to the U.S.-sponsored Camp David peace treaty between Israel and Egypt. That treaty, signed in 1979, led 16 other Arab nations to break relations with Egypt.

After a meeting with the Egyptian prime minister in Damascus on Wednesday morning, Mahmoud Zoubi, Sedki’s Syrian counterpart, said: “Developments witnessed by the Arab world require that Syria and Egypt return to each other on the basis of their historical and fraternal bonds.”

Sedki responded: “I can say that what has been achieved today in Damascus surpasses all the positive impressions I had when I arrived this morning.”