The GCC "now considers Iraq occupied and we hope there will be a civil administration of the Iraqi people as soon as possible," said Qatari FM

RIYADH, April 16 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – As the U.S. stepped up its anti-Syria campaign with its occupation forces in Iraq shutting down a pipeline carrying cut-rate Iraqi oil shipments to Syria, the six Arab Gulf states called urged Washington to grind to cessation its threats to Damascus.

"We think the threat to Syria should stop. We reject any infringement of Syria's security," Qatari Foreign Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani told reporters late Tuesday, April 15, after a meeting of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC).

Urging the U.S. to tone down the bellicose rhetoric against Damascus, the GCC, whose members control nearly half the world's known oil reserves, urged "Britain to begin direct negotiations with Damascus to resolve the problem."

U.S. officials had mounted up their scathing accusations that Syria has given a shelter to Iraqi regime members and develops weapons o mass destruction, claims categorically repudiated by Damascus.

On concerns that Syria might be the next on the U.S. "hit list" after the Iraq phase, the Qatari foreign minister, whose country hosts the U.S. Central Command directing the Iraq war, said: "We don't think aggression is being prepared against Syria."

Sheikh Hamad, who presided over the meeting, added that the council "now considers Iraq occupied and we hope there will be a civil administration of the Iraqi people as soon as possible".

"The creation of an Iraqi transitional government is very important because the Iraqi people won't accept a government from outside for very long," he said.

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell made clear Tuesday that Washington has no intention of attacking any other countries in the Middle East.

"There is no war plan right now to go attack someone else," he said, but added that Washington was expecting to see change in Syria.

Critics of the war against Iraq are already accusing the Bush administration hawks of targeting Syria as the first in a new string of conflicts with Middle East regimes.

"The War Party has blood in its nostrils and is headed for Damascus," said conservative columnist Patrick J. Buchanan, a fierce critic of the Iraq war who accused American hawks of putting Israel's security needs above U.S. interests in the region.

The talk over war with Syria increasingly resembles a spring rerun of the debate over war with Iraq, with virtually the same cast of characters and plot, U.S. daily Washington Times reported.

Neoconservative Richard Perle, a leading hawk in the Iraq debate, called for Congress to pass a "Syrian Liberation Act" modeled on the 1998 law that made regime change in Baghdad official U.S. policy.

"There are many ways to fight these battles," Perle, a civilian adviser to the Pentagon, told a forum at the American Enterprise Institute.

Economic and diplomatic sanctions on Syria, a vociferous opponent of the U.S. war against neighboring Iraq, have been threatened, and some U.S. government spokesmen have refused to rule out military action, BBC News Online reported.

Pipeline "Shut"

Tuesday saw U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld confirm that a pipeline supplying Iraqi oil to Syria had been "shut off", claiming it is in contravention of United Nations sanctions.

"We do know that they have been instructed to shut it down, and they have told us that they have," he said, though he could not assure the flow of oil between the two countries had died up completely.

For more than two years, Syria imported 150,000 to 180,000 barrels of oil a day from Iraq.

Now, with the shutting down the pipeline, Syria must adjust to a loss of one billion dollars in annual income – a further burden to the poor country and its frail economy.

With higher oil bills looming, Syrian President Bashar Assad will be less able to withstand U.S. economic and political pressure, some analysts say.

Assad slammed the U.S. aggression against Iraq, calling it a "clear occupation and aggression against a United Nations member state."

"It's a huge financial hit," said Jon Alterman, director of the Middle East Program at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"The government of Syria doesn't have a lot of ways to get money," he added.

U.N. Mandate

And in an apparent response to the U.S. accusations, Syria is preparing to introduce a resolution at the U.N. Security Council on Wednesday, calling for the Middle East to be declared a "zone free of weapons of mass destruction" - a clear reference to Israel's nuclear weapons program, the BBC News Online said.

Arab League ambassador to the U.N., Yahya Mahmassani, said U.S. allegations against Syria were "unacceptable and unfounded".

"The Arab world is already engulfed with anger and frustration," he said.

U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan has expressed concern that recent statements about Syria may further destabilize the Middle East.