US puts ships from Syria on watchlist
WASHINGTON (AFP) — The United States has put ships making port calls in Syria on a watchlist, an official said Thursday, as Washington ratcheted up the pressure on Damascus over its alleged links with terrorism.
The decision, which could put pressure on businesses trading or shipping through Syria, was a further blow to long strained ties that had held out brief hopes of improvement last November when the United States courted Syria for the launch of new Palestinian-Israeli peace talks.
Syria was placed on a so-called "Port Security Advisory List" amid "concerns about the connections between Syria and international terrorist organizations," the State Department's deputy spokesman Tom Casey told reporters.
The move allows the Coast Guard "to impose some additional port security measures to ships traveling to or arriving in US ports that have previously been either departing from Syria or have called on Syrian ports," he said.
Casey added he understood the measures would affect any ship that has visited Syria during its last five ports of call, but referred reporters to the Coast Guard and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for further information.
Nobody was immediately available for comment at DHS, while the Coast Guard public affairs office promised to try to provide details of the decision on Friday.
The development marked yet another turn for the worse in a relationship that clearly started to sour again at the end of January when Casey said it was time for Syria to stop its alleged abuses of human rights and support for terrorism.
Washington had long complained of Syria's support for opponents of the Middle East peace talks, such as the radical Hamas movement in the Palestinian territories and the pro-Iranian Shiite Muslim group Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Both are denounced here as terrorist groups.
Ties with Washington got a brief boost when Syria joined US allies Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan at the international conference in Annapolis, Maryland last November to launch new Palestinian-Israeli peace talks.
But the cooling trend now appears to have crystalized with events.
A US Navy official said Wednesday that the warships USS Ross and the USS Philippine Sea have relieved the USS Cole to take up positions in the eastern Mediterranean off Lebanon, which is just south of Syria's own coastline.
"It's a sign of our commitment to stability in the region," said Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman.
The Cole was deployed to waters off Lebanon to signal US concern over a protracted political crisis in Lebanon.
Feuding between a western-backed parliamentary majority and the Syrian and Iranian-backed opposition has left Lebanon leaderless since November.
In February, the US Treasury Department said that it had blacklisted four men accused of funneling militants, weapons and money through Syria to support Al-Qaeda operations in Iraq.
Also last month the Treasury announced it was freezing the assets of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's cousin as part of widening sanctions against Damascus targeting officials engaged in "public corruption."
And on the third anniversary of the assassination of Lebanese ex-premier Rafiq Hariri on February 14, US President George W. Bush urged justice for the killers and an end to Syrian and Iranian influence in Lebanon.
Syria and Iran deny such accusations.
