US official to meet Syrian negotiator
For the second time this week, a senior American official will meet with representatives of a Middle Eastern country that the US has sought to isolate diplomatically. David Welch, US assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, is set to speak with Riad Daoudi, the Syrian Foreign Ministry's legal counselor and lead Syrian negotiator for the ongoing indirect talks with Israel, as well as fellow Syrian advisers and analysts during their visit here this week. The meeting comes on the heels of a trip by US Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs William Burns, the third-highest US diplomat, to attend an international meeting with Iranian and other officials over Teheran's nuclear program Saturday, a major change for an administration that had until recently ruled out such contacts. The Syrian delegation will be in town in coordination with the US-Syria Working Group, a multi-month project spearheaded by the NGO Search for Common Ground in an effort to advance relations between the two countries and defuse tensions in the Middle East region. The State Department downplayed the meeting and suggestions that it represented a further shift in American attitudes toward Middle Eastern adversaries or an opening in the relationship between Washington and Damascus. Ann Somerset, the spokeswoman for the State Department's Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, described Welch's meeting as "routine" and not indicative of a change in a policy that has limited diplomatic contact with high-ranking officials over Syria's "destabilizing" policies in the region. (13,14)
