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Evidence of Syrian Complicity in Attacks on US in Iraq
(Jerusalem Post) Douglas Davis - The U.S. administration in Iraq and the Iraqi Governing Council have solid evidence of direct, top-level Syrian complicity in attacks against American and Iraqi security forces, a senior source within the council said Thursday. One of the two Iraqis captured with Saddam in the Tikrit area had acted as Saddam's personal envoy to Syrian President Bashar Assad until just six weeks before his arrest. The source also said that suicide bombers from various Arab countries had crossed into Iraq from Syria, carrying Syrian documents. He said he believes the Syrian regime has attempted to make life as difficult - and as bloody - as possible for the Americans to dissuade them from turning their sights on Damascus once the security threats in Iraq are contained. He added that the council had acquired thousands of documents from the files of the Mukhabarat (secret police), the state oil company, and in Saddam's personal office, which expose a network of politicians throughout the Arab world and Europe who had accepted huge payments from Saddam in the form of "oil contracts." He said the evidence incriminates the most senior members of the Jordanian royal family in allegedly illegal and corrupt dealings with Saddam. Saying that the absence of a hostile regime in Baghdad has reduced Israel's strategic dependence on the Hashemite kingdom as a buffer against Iraq, he predicted that Jordan would, sooner rather than later, become a Palestinian state. He said many members of the governing council are personally well-disposed toward Israel, and insisted that the new Iraq would not be hostile to it.