US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Friday the US was not seeking to isolate Syria on the world scene but was hoping Damascus would act itself on a range of US complaints.
Washington has been stepping up the pressure on Syria, considered a sponsor of terrorism, since Monday's assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri in Beirut.
But Rice, who recalled her ambassador to Damascus this week for "urgent consultations," denied Friday the aim was to isolate the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. "We are not trying to isolate Syria," she told reporters after meeting with Dutch Foreign Minister Bernard Bot. "What we are trying to do is get Syria to engage in more responsible behavior."
She cited in particular the need to cooperate with a thorough investigation of the Hariri assassination, which the US blames at least indirectly on the Syrians.
Rice also reiterated her call for the Syrians to end their support for insurgents in Iraq as well as Islamic militants seeking to wreck the Middle East peace process.
Her remarks that the US administration was not trying to isolate Syria appeared to contrast somewhat with her call at a Senate hearing Thursday for "concerted international pressure" on Damascus.
President George W. Bush told a news conference the same day that "the idea is to continue to work with the world to remind Syria it's not in their interest to be isolated."
But State Department spokesman Richard Boucher denied there was any change Friday in the tenor of the Bush administration's approach to Syria. "I don't think there was any toning down," he said.
Airlines in Australia, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia and Singapore yesterday canceled flights to and from the Indonesian island of Bali, after a nearby volcano catapulted an ash tower into the sky. Australia’s Jetstar, Qantas and Virgin Australia all grounded flights after Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki on Flores island spewed a 9km tower a day earlier. Malaysia Airlines, AirAsia, India’s IndiGo and Singapore’s Scoot also listed flights as canceled. “Volcanic ash poses a significant threat to safe operations of the aircraft in the vicinity of volcanic clouds,” AirAsia said as it announced several cancelations. Multiple eruptions from the 1,703m twin-peaked volcano in
Farmer Liu Bingyong used to make a tidy profit selling milk but is now leaking cash — hit by a dairy sector crisis that embodies several of China’s economic woes. Milk is not a traditional mainstay of Chinese diets, but the Chinese government has long pushed people to drink more, citing its health benefits. The country has expanded its dairy production capacity and imported vast numbers of cattle in recent years as Beijing pursues food self-sufficiency. However, chronically low consumption has left the market sloshing with unwanted milk — driving down prices and pushing farmers to the brink — while
‘SIGNS OF ESCALATION’: Russian forces have been aiming to capture Ukraine’s eastern Donbas province and have been capturing new villages as they move toward Pokrovsk Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi on Saturday said that Ukraine faced increasing difficulties in its fight against Moscow’s invasion as Russian forces advance and North Korean troops prepare to join the Kremlin’s campaign. Syrskyi, relating comments he made to a top US general, said outnumbered Ukrainian forces faced Russian attacks in key sectors of the more than two-and-a-half-year-old war with Russia. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in a nightly address said that Ukraine’s military command was focused on defending around the town of Kurakhove — a target of Russia’s advances along with Pokrovsk, a logistical hub to the north. He decried strikes
China has built a land-based prototype nuclear reactor for a large surface warship, in the clearest sign yet Beijing is advancing toward producing the nation’s first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, according to a new analysis of satellite imagery and Chinese government documents provided to The Associated Press. There have long been rumors that China is planning to build a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, but the research by the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in California is the first to confirm it is working on a nuclear-powered propulsion system for a carrier-sized surface warship. Why is China’s pursuit of nuclear-powered carriers significant? China’s navy is already
RSS