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Iraqi official says Syria exporting terror
(AP)
Updated: 2005-11-14 10:45
Iraq's defense minister criticized Syria for letting militants train on
Syrian soil and warned Sunday that an escalation of violence in Iraq will spill
over into neighboring countries.
Saadoun al-Dulaimi's visit to Jordan follows Wednesday's triple hotel suicide
bombings in the Jordanian capital Amman by the al-Qaida in Iraq terror group.
Fifty-seven people died, excluding the bombers.
"We have more than 450 detainees who came from different Arab and Muslim
countries to train in Syria and enter with their booby-trapped vehicles into
Iraq to bring destruction and killings," al-Dulaimi said after meeting Jordanian
Prime Minister Adnan Badran.
"Let me tell the Syrians that if the Iraqi volcano explodes, no neighboring
capital will be saved," al-Dulaimi told The Associated Press.
Syria has denied that it hosts supporters of the Iraqi insurgency, but says
it cannot maintain perfect control of its long desert border with Iraq.
In Cairo on Sunday, Iraqi national security advisor Mawafak al-Rubaei
appealed for Egypt to use its weight with Arab countries "to stop exporting
death to Iraq, especially sister Syria."
Al-Dulaimi demanded more anti-terror support from Damascus, which is already
facing intense pressure from the United States to lock down its borders and stop
extremists allied with the Jordanian-born militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the
leader of al-Qaida in Iraq, from entering the country.
"Iraq is bordering several countries, Iran, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Jordan,
but why is it only the Syrian borders that I have complained more than once
about?" al-Dulaimi said.
Iraqi and U.S. forces have been trying to crush Iraq's rampant insurgency,
led by al-Zarqawi and Saddam Hussein loyalists, for the past two years.
Al-Qaida in Iraq's attack in Jordan — its deadliest inside a neighboring
Mideast country — has also raised fears that al-Zarqawi's terror campaign has
gained enough momentum to spread throughout the region.
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