Hillary Clinton offers handshake of friendship to Syria

It was a brief but significant gesture: in the hubbub of the Gaza donor’s conference in Egypt, Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, shook hands and exchanged a few words yesterday with Walid Mouallem, her Syrian counterpart.

In the Middle East, where even the slightest gesture is closely scrutinised, the brief encounter was seen as a sign that Washington was prepared to mend fences with Syria, whose leader, Bashar Assad, was treated as a pariah by the Bush Administration.

Mr Mouallem said afterwards that the meeting “was short but very pleasant”, and that he was “happy it happened”. With the strict protocols at summits, such encounters rarely happen by chance; they are more frequently designed to send subtle but powerful messages. The Syrian Foreign Minister was standing at the door to the banquet room as delegates filed in for lunch at the conference to pledge more than $5 billion (£3.6 billion) for the reconstruction of Gaza. Mrs Clinton, on her first official trip to the region, had just promised to breathe new life into the peace process. She stopped in front of Mr Mouallem, shook his hand and exchanged a few words with him.

The meeting was all the more significant as Mrs Clinton had just told Abdullah bin Zayed al-Nahyan, the United Arab Emirates Foreign Minister, that she doubted that Iran – Syria’s main ally in the region – would respond to President Obama’s offer to engage with it after years of enmity. “We’re under no illusions,” Mrs Clinton said, according to an aide. “Our eyes are wide open on Iran.”

Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at the weekend that Iran had enough uranium to complete its nuclear weapons programme – an ambition Tehran has always denied. “We think they do, quite frankly,” the admiral said. “And Iran having nuclear weapons, I’ve believed for a long time, is a very, very bad outcome – for the region and for the world.”

If Iran does not respond to US overtures, the new Administration may try to lure Syria away from its partner, opening the door to a return to the diplomatic fold at a time when Syria’s economy is suffering from years of isolation.

Times Online