Pat Dollard | Young Americans

Times Online:

It was a brief but significant gesture: in the hubbub of the Gaza donor’s conference on Egypt’s Red Sea coast, Hillary Clinton shook hands and exchanged a few words today with her Syrian counterpart, Walid Mouallem.

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 Bashir al-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, and 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 for the reconstruction of war-torn Gaza. The US Secretary of State, 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 Iran - Syria’s main ally in the region, which the US believes now has enough enriched uranium to build a nuclear bomb - 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, confirmed 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.

Israel, which sees Iran as its main threat, has also made moves in that direction, opening indirect peace talks through Turkey, which remained on track even after an Israeli raid on a suspected Syrian nuclear facility in 2007.

One of Iran’s key methods of attacking Israel is through its Lebanese proxies, Hezbollah, which it trains, funds and arms. Much of that logistical support goes through Syria, making a deal with Damascus even more alluring to Israel and the US.

Earlier this month several leading US Congressmen, including Senator John Kerry, who ran against George Bush in the 2004 presidential elections, visited Damascus for talks with President al-Assad.

Last week, the Syrian ambassador to Washington, Imad Moustapha, held what he described as “very constructive” talks with one of Mrs Clinton’s deputies, Jeffrey Feltman, a former US ambassador to Lebanon.

“We believe that this meeting has explored possibilities between Syria and the United States to engage on a diplomatic and political level and also to discuss all issues of mutual concern,” the Syrian ambassador said afterwards. “We think this is a first step and we believe there will be many further meetings.”

Many analysts believe that the new Israeli Government led by the hawkish Binyanim Netanyahu may concentrate its efforts on a peace deal with Syria, rather than the Palestinians.

Mr Netanyahu has said he fears a fledgling Palestinian state could become yet another Iranian proxy on Israel’s doorstep in the same way that Gaza has fallen under Tehran’s sway since Hamas took over in 2007.

At today’s donor conference in Sharm El-Sheikh, Mrs Clinton warned that time was running out for a solution to the protracted regional crisis that has confounded all her predecessors, as well as her husband when he was President.

“We cannot afford more setbacks or delays — or regrets about what might have been had different decisions been made,” she said, chiding Hamas for its ongoing rocket attacks on Israel and promising that billions of dollars in pledged aid should not fall into the “wrong hands,” a clear reference to the Islamist rulers of Gaza.