"Senior regime people are moving out of Iraq into Syria and Syria is continuing to send things into Iraq," Rumsfeld

WASHINGTON, April 10 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – As his Marines tightened up their grip on the heart of Baghdad, smiling U.S. Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld charged Wednesday, April 9, that senior Iraqi leaders are fleeing to Syria, which he claims is continuing to send military assistance into Iraq.

"Senior regime people are moving out of Iraq into Syria and Syria is continuing to send things into Iraq. We find it notably unhelpful," Agence France-Presse (AFP) quoted him as telling a press conference.

"I have accurately advised that they not provide military assistance to Iraq," he said, noting that Syria had been providing Iraq forces with equipment including night vision goggles.

Rumsfeld said intelligence pointed to Syria having been "cooperative in facilitating the movement of people out of Iraq into Syria."

"In some cases, they stay there, finding safe keeping there. In other cases, they're moving from Syria to still “other places”. We've also seen people from Syria moving into Iraq, unhelpfully," he added.

For his part, U.S. Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton said Wednesday that Syria should “heed the lesson” of the U.S.-led conflict in Iraq.

"We are hopeful that a number of regimes will draw the appropriate lesson from Iraq. That the pursuit of weapons of mass destruction is not in their interest," he said.

Bolton was speaking in Rome following a meeting with senior Vatican officials including Foreign Minister Jean-Louis Tauran.

"I think Syria is a good case where I hope they will conclude that the chemical weapons programme (and) the biological weapons program they've been pursuing are things they should give up.

U.S. Sponsors Conference Of Iraq Exiles

Meanwhile, the United States said Wednesday it would convene soon a conference of Iraqi exiles and local leaders in Iraq as a first step in organizing an interim indigenous government for the country.

Vice President Dick Cheney said the meeting was set for Saturday, April 12, near the southern city of An-Nasiriyah but the State Department, which said it would be "heavily involved" in planning the talks, said no date or venue was yet set.

"We're going to have a meeting on the 12th, just three days from now, in Tallil outside An An-Nasiriyah in southern Iraq, where we will bring together representatives of groups from all over Iraq to begin to sit down and talk about planning for the future of this Iraqi Interim Authority (IIA) and getting it up and running," Cheney said in a speech in New Orleans.

The meeting is expected to be the first in a series of similar gatherings that will pave the way for a larger conference to be held in Baghdad at which the interim government would be chosen, officials said.

However, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher would not comment on Cheney's remarks but indicated that the meeting was still in the planning stages and that no venue had been decided.

"What's being planned now is a meeting of liberated Iraqis from newly “freed” areas of Iraq, as well as members of the free Iraqi opposition, who have been free overseas," he told reporters.