U.S. Says Syria Aids Iraq Rebels

The Bush administration Tuesday accused Syria of helping insurgents in Iraq by giving haven to elements of deposed President Saddam Hussein’s regime.

“And it is a problem that we think Syria needs to act to stop,” State Department spokesman Adam Ereli said.

Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage is likely to discuss the U.S. complaint when he stops in Damascus on a trip that also will take him to Turkey and Jordan.

Details of Armitage’s itinerary were withheld, except that he would leave Washington this week and return sometime next week.

Syria has said it was being made a scapegoat for the U.S. failure to stop the uprising in Iraq.

Reports circulated in Damascus, meanwhile, that key support for the insurgents was coming from Baath Party leaders in the Syrian capital and a half-brother of Hussein.

Ereli said Syrian officials “have done some things with respect to the border and working with the Iraqis to control the border.”

But “the continued presence of former regime elements in Syria who are working, we believe, to the detriment of Iraq and in support of the insurgency is a problem that we think Syria needs to act to stop,” he said.