Syria’s vice president Tuesday accused Israel of plotting to partition Iraq, tap its oil wealth and settle Palestinians there. In an interview with the government-controlled Damascus newspaper, Tishrine, Abdel Halim Khaddam also accused Israel of seeking ‘to get closer to the Iranian border’ with an Iraq strategy that would be part of plot to encircle the Gulf’s oil nations.
‘Iraq is being targeted like any other part of the Arab nation, and the Israeli goal is clear, for it attempts to establish a regional order under its command,’ he said.
His remarks contrasted with the restraint Syria had been showing in its statements about Israel since the Nov. 4 assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.
An Arab official has proposed to Iraqi opposition leaders a plan to partition Iraq into three divisions in federation with another Arab country, Khaddam said. He named neither the Arab official nor the country and did not say whether he believes that Israel was involved in the alleged proposal.
‘Recently, this plan has been proposed one more time to some parties of the Iraqi opposition, which raised big worries for us and prompted our action with some Arab states and Iraqi opposition to confront such a danger,’ Khaddam said. ‘This is a very critical and sensitive issue, and it is the duty of all Arabs to face such projects and…save it (Iraq) from internal disintegration,’ he said. The Syrian vice president offered no evidence to support his accusations against Israel.
He blamed Israel for stalling peace talks over the Golan Heights, the strategic plateau that Israel captured in 1967.
Syrian artillery used the position to shell Israeli villages before 1967. Syria has demanded that Israel withdraw from the heights before serious peace talks can begin, while Israel has refused to do so until Syria spells out what relations can be expected with Syria if peace is ever agreed. The impasse in the talks has also snarled the Lebanese-Israeli peace track because Syria is the main power broker in Lebanon, where at least 35,000 of its troops are based. ‘The peace process on the Syrian and Lebanese tracks is still stagnant because of differences in understanding the basis on which the peace process was launched,’ Khaddam said. Israel has refused to accept a ‘clear withdrawal’ from the heights despite an agreement he said it had made with Syria, through the United States, on ‘general principles of security arrangements.’
