AMY GOODMAN: We can hear you, if you can try to ignore the sound. We can hear you fine.

PATRICK SEALE: Well, Syria has always sought better relations with the United States. Now, it’s suffered very much from what it considers America's alignment on Israel. Indeed, it's striking that President Bashar should urge the United States to be more even-handed, more neutral in its approach to the Middle East, not only, of course, on the Palestinian question, but also on the subject very dear to Syrian hearts, the occupied Golan. Now, as you know, Israel occupied the Golan in 1967, and the United States, in spite of Security Council Resolutions 242, 338, has allowed that occupation to stand, as it has allowed the occupation of Palestinian territories to stand for the last 39 years. The United States allowed Israel to occupy Lebanon, Southern Lebanon, for 22 years, and occupy the Palestinian territories for 39 years. Now, these are the reasons why many, many Arabs are very disgruntled, very hostile to the United States. Now, the United States believes that Israel can use force to protect its own supremacy in the region, but this is increasingly contested.

And so, in terms of President Bashar Al-Asad, he made very clear that Syria cannot tolerate the use of Lebanon to mount hostile operations against Syria. That's when he was answering the question about why not restore -- have an exchange of embassies, have diplomatic relations with Lebanon. He said, ‘Well, we could do that once we have normal relations and once we have a Lebanese government in Beirut which doesn't work against Syria or cooperate with its enemies.’ So he was very clear on all those issues, and his appeal to the United States was to understand the region better, understand that there are other countries in the region, apart from Israel, with whom the United States has common interests, and should recognize those interests.

AMY GOODMAN: Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh detailed several years ago how the Bush administration destroyed U.S.-Syrian relations by attacking a convoy of cars inside Syria in an attempt to assassinate Saddam Hussein. It turned out the convoy was made up of cars that were smuggling goods out of Iraq, and Syria has since stopped cooperating with the United States.

PATRICK SEALE: Well, that's true. It wasn't just that. I mean, Syria, like many other countries in the world, like France, like Germany, was very much opposed to the attack on Iraq. The Syrians had no love for Saddam Hussein, but the idea that the United States should attack -- I mean, an unprovoked attack against a major Arab country -- and smash it and kill tens of thousands of people, and then accuse Syria, of all countries, of interfering or Iran of interfering, when the United States, which previously had opposed, over the horizon, of keeping away from the heartland of the Middle East, suddenly makes this qualitative leap of attacking a major Arab state, this has caused consternation in the region.

And, of course, the Syrians feel threatened. They feel that they may be next. At least they felt that in the earlier stages of the attack. Now, I think they feel a bit more confident, because of the quagmire in which the United States finds itself. I mean, it looks very much as if the neo-cons, the pro-Israeli neo-cons, in influential positions in the U.S. administration took the United States for a ride. They involved it in this attack on Iraq, no doubt believing this would improve Israel's strategic environment. But this has proved to be a catastrophe for the United States, extremely costly in men and treasure.

AMY GOODMAN: Patrick Seale, we're going to go back to the interview that independent journalist Reese Erlich did with the President of Syria, Bashar Al-Asad, last month, again, before the current conflict.

REESE ERLICH: President Bush made a surprise visit to Baghdad today, or yesterday and today. Zarqawi was killed. Do you think that -- the Bush administration is trying to say that they're making progress now in Iraq. Do you think -- well, first of all, do you think that's accurate, or do you think the U.S. in some ways has actually already lost the war?

PRESIDENT BASHAR AL-ASAD: Lost the war and making progress are linked together, so have to ask about the goal first. So you have goal, democracy, the answer is very clear: the situation is much worse than before, even during Saddam’s, that we don't defend in Syria. If they talk about better living standards, the situation much, much worse than before. If they are talking about development, about infrastructure, about anything, so everything is worse. So that depends on what the goal of the war.

You cannot talk about occupation. I mean, occupation is not the goal of the war. This is the mean, occupation. But if we talk about the military side of the war, killing Americans every day in Iraq, and, of course, killing Iraqis, tens of Iraqis every week, is that the goal of the war from the military point of view? I don't think so. The answer is very clear for us.

REESE ERLICH: But even in a military sense, the U.S. no longer controls certain areas of Iraq. It's very unstable, even in the south, in the Basra area. It would seem that even from a strictly military standpoint, the situation has gotten worse from the U.S. Do you think that's true?

PRESIDENT BASHAR AL-ASAD: It’s self-evident. No power, no military power in the world, even the United States, can control a small country militarily. You can only control a country if the people wants you to control it. When the people are against you -- and this is very normal to have the people against the occupation in Iraq and in any other country -- you are going to have resistance, and you will not control anything. This is normal.

REESE ERLICH: What do you think the outcome is going to be, if you said a few years from now, what do you think the situation will look like in Iraq?

PRESIDENT BASHAR AL-ASAD: That depends on the constitution, first of all. You need consensus. If you want to talk about the future of Iraq, we should talk about a consensus about something, and normally the future of Iraq is going to be inside the constitution. So far, according to what we hear from many Iraqi factions, some factions think they are oppressed, so this needs to be re-evaluated. I think this is at the core of the future. If there's no consensus about the constitution, you will have conflict or maybe a civil war. This is the core, not having a new government or having some relation. This is good, we support in Syria. We support the political process, but this is not enough. This is for the short term, it's okay. For the long term, no, it's not enough.

REESE ERLICH: Sources have told me you've been involved in promoting some negotiations between the Sunni resistance and the government. Is that accurate?

PRESIDENT BASHAR AL-ASAD: Actually, what we tried to promote is the unified Iraq. This is the only thing. We tried to see what's in common between the whole Iraqis, and we tried to make some negotiations, some marketing, some ideas that the Iraqi would think it helps unifying Iraq or keep it unified, so far. And this is how we put our role as, in general.

REESE ERLICH: But, specifically, have you helped facilitate some talks between the resistance, the people opposed, fighting the United States, and the Iraqi government?

PRESIDENT BASHAR AL-ASAD: Actually, there's a delegation that comes to Syria. We don't know if they are resistance or not. They are Iraqis. And they don’t know -- nobody knows who are the resistance. Only the Iraqis. So don't believe if anyone tells you that he knows what the resistance? So, but definitely, most of them, most of the Iraqis that we meet, they are supporting the resistance, at least politically.

REESE ERLICH: And are you trying to facilitate the political supporters to hold negotiations with the government?

PRESIDENT BASHAR AL-ASAD: Yeah, we always say that we are ready to help in any way, but definitely Syria is open for this, and we tried to. Yeah, we did some effort.

REESE ERLICH: There's been recent deaths on the beach in Gaza. Hamas has ended its ceasefire with Israel. What is your -- it seems like a very great struggle is re-emerging now in Palestine. What is your prediction for the next short-term period in Palestine?

PRESIDENT BASHAR AL-ASAD: You mean the Palestinian-Palestinan relation or Palestinian --

REESE ERLICH: Palestinian-Israeli relations, yeah.

PRESIDENT BASHAR AL-ASAD: Of course, when you have conflict between the Palestinians, you won’t have a peace talk in the near future. So I’m talking about -- I’m talking from the West’s point of view now. From our point of view, it's something -- between the Palestinians, it’s something humanitarian, that we consider them as brothers.

But I think the Palestinians are paying the price of Oslo, treaty in 1993, and this is first. Second, they paid the price of the paralyzed peace process, especially after the 2000 negotiation at Camp David and the deadlock that they reached between the Palestinian and the Israeli and the negligence of the American administration of the peace process, in general.

AMY GOODMAN: The President of Syria, Bashar Al-Asad, speaking with independent journalist, Reese Erlich. We’re going to go to him in a minute, but I wanted to ask Patrick Seale quickly, in France, about how much control you think Syria has over Hezbollah in Lebanon now.

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