(State Department) - Secretary of State Colin Powell said Thursday: "It is not enough just to have a ceasefire, a hudna, as it is called, which could be ended any day. What we really need is a concerted effort on the part of the Palestinian Authority to go after those organizations within the Palestinian community that have the capacity of conducting terrorist acts, organizations such as Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad. We can't have a situation where, during a time of a ceasefire, those organizations are improving their capability, testing new weapons, or creating new factories in order to build more weapons." "In my visit to Damascus, I conveyed to the President of Syria that we really believe that Damascus should no longer be allowed to serve as a headquarters for terrorist organizations who were determined to defeat the roadmap...and we believe Syria should do everything to shut them down. We also believe that Syria should not be participating in any transshipment of weapons or other materiel to Hizballah....We are still not satisfied with the performance that we have seen so far, and we are communicating that on a regular basis to our Syrian colleagues."
2003-08-08 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive