Some Unlikely Allies in the Anti-Terrorism War

Syrian President Hafez Assad, long named by the United States as a major sponsor of terrorism, acted to restrain terrorists from attacking Western targets during the Persian Gulf War after a personal appeal from President Bush, Secretary of State James A. Baker III said Sunday.

Other officials said that Iran and even Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi played “a surprisingly responsible role” and apparently urged their allies not to attack American and other Western interests during the war.

The unusual stand by three of the Middle East’s most radical regimes may have been a major factor in heading off anti-American terrorism during the six-week war, in part because it meant that pro-Iraqi terrorists could not count on a safe haven in those countries, terrorism experts said.

In the case of Syria, it also gave U.S. officials new hope for a more productive relationship with Assad after a decade-long chill, much of it arising from Damascus’s suspected role in such terrorist attacks as the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut. Syria is also the headquarters of the Palestinian terrorist group suspected of carrying out the December, 1988, bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.

Recently, however, Baker said, “there has been some movement . . . and Syria has taken some action.”

“With respect to some of those groups that were targeting Western and particularly U.S. interests, Syria is serious when it says, ‘We are going to see what we can do about that, because we are interested in improving our relationship with the West,’ ” Baker said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Baker said President Bush raised the issue of terrorism in his meeting with Assad in Geneva last November. Baker also discussed the issue with the Syrian leader during two meetings last year, he said.

“We made it very clear that if there was going to be any improvement in the relationship between the United States and Syria, they had to address this issue of terrorism,” he said.

Baker noted that the two countries now largely agree that terrorism should be suppressed, except in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, where “we still have, frankly, a definitional problem, a difference between the United States and Syria with respect to what constitutes terrorism. They take the view . . . that almost anything goes in the occupied territories.”

Baker is scheduled to visit Syria during a trip through the Middle East this week, and officials said he hopes to enlist Assad in an ambitious set of negotiations on regional security, peace with Israel and other issues.

Syria is still officially listed by the State Department as a government that sponsors terrorism.

Other Arab members of the coalition against Iraq, including Egypt and Saudi Arabia, also helped Western intelligence services squelch potential terrorist actions, officials said.

And both Iran and Libya, major terrorist sponsors in the past, made public statements against terrorism that officials believe were mirrored in private actions.

“Some terrorist groups were held down by governments,” said William M. Baker, assistant FBI director for criminal investigations, who oversees the FBI counterterrorism program. He refused to name the governments but made clear he was referring to countries that had supported terrorism in the past.

“The Arab coalition is a strong factor in this,” he noted. “This was not, as Saddam Hussein tried to portray it, a Muslim-against-infidel or Crusader war. The Arabs were rightfully outraged” at that claim by the Iraqi leader.

As a result, Baker said, any terrorist groups that supported Hussein--and that wanted to respond to his appeal for action--were left without any bases outside Iraq. In some cases, he said, they were physically stranded in Iraq. “The rush to Baghdad by certain terrorist groups cut them off once the conflict began,” he said.

Iran’s President Hashemi Rafsanjani, who has been slowly seeking a more pragmatic relationship with Western and moderate Arab countries, said several times during the war that his government did not support pro-Iraqi terrorism.

More surprising to some U.S. officials, though, Libya’s Kadafi publicly condemned Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, supported the U.N. resolutions against Baghdad and said he would oppose any terrorism in connection with the war.

“I am absolutely against any kind of terrorism,” Kadafi said in a British television interview.

The State Department counted 164 terrorist actions since Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait last Aug. 2, most of them minor in scale. None of the attacks occurred in the United States, but about half of the incidents in other countries were aimed at American targets such as airline offices or military installations.