UNITED STATES: Diplomats had asked administrations to sanction Syrian officials.
Two U.S. administrations declined in recent years to place sanctions on Syrian officials who now are involved in that country’s harsh crackdown on dissidents, despite the officials’ involvement in crushing internal opposition previously, according to secret State Department cables obtained by WikiLeaks.
In one instance, the top diplomat at the U.S. Embassy in Damascus asked the State Department in 2007 to impose sanctions on Ali Mamluk, the chief of intelligence for Syrian President Bashar Assad. But no action was taken against Mamluk until this April, after security forces had killed scores of civilian protesters in the Syrian town of Deraa.
How to deal with Assad’s inner circle clearly has been a difficult problem for the administrations of Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, according to the cables. Despite suggestions as long ago as 2006 that Assad was falling short on promises to open his country’s political system, neither administration was willing to take firm action against his closest advisers, the cables show.
LIBYA: Gadhafi son claims secret alliance with radical Islamists.
After six months battling a rebellion that his family portrayed as an Islamist conspiracy, Moammar Gadhafi’s son and one-time heir apparent said Wednesday that he was reversing course to forge a secret alliance with radical Islamist elements among the Libyan rebels to drive out their more liberal- minded confederates.
“The liberals will escape or be killed,” the son, Seif al-Islam Gadhafi, vowed in an hour-long interview that stretched past midnight.
“Libya will look like Saudi Arabia, like Iran. So what?”
The leading Islamist whom Gadhafi identified as his main counterpart in the talks, Ali Sallabi, acknowledged their conversations but dismissed any suggestion of an alliance. He said the Libyan Islamists supported the rebel leaders’ calls for a pluralistic democracy without the Gadhafis.
But the interview nonetheless offered a rare glimpse into the defiant, some say delusional, mentality of the Gadhafi family at a time when they have all but completely retreated from public view under the threat of the rebellion and a NATO bombing campaign.
Meanwhile, an international journalists’ group sharply criticized NATO airstrikes against Libyan television, which killed three people and injured 15, saying they violated international law and U.N. resolutions.
SAUDI ARABIA: British newspaper pays libel damages to Saudi prince.
Saudi Prince Nayef Bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud has accepted undisclosed libel damages from British newspaper The Independent over an article that accused him of ordering police chiefs to shoot and kill unarmed demonstrators.
The Independent Print Ltd. and its Middle East correspondent, Robert Fisk, both offered their “sincere apologies” at London’s High Court on Wednesday, saying there was no truth to the claim.
Lawyer Rupert Earle said his client Prince Nayef — second in line to the Saudi throne and minister of the interior since 1970 — will donate the damages to a charity.
Denver Post wire services
