The US relationship with Syria has been strained to say the least and though the Bush Administration didn’t formally treat Damascus as part of the “Axis of Evil,” Syria was effectively treated as an international pariah. The United States has criticized Syria for supporting groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, and has accused the country of allowing extremists to cross its border to fight US-led forces in Iraq. The Bush Administration recalled the US ambassador to Syria for consultations in early 2005 in protest of the Hariri assassination in Lebanon — Syrian officials have been investigated in the killing, though Damascus denies involvement. Significantly, however, the Bush Administration opted to maintain diplomatic relations even as the relationship continued to sour and deteriorate. As Martin Indyk, the Director of the Brookings Institution Saban Center for Middle East Studies and former US Ambassador to Israel, noted the dominant view of Syria that had developed in Washington during the Bush Administration is that of Syria as “a country ruled by an unreliable leader, with ruthless ambitions to dominate its smaller Lebanese neighbor, harboring Palestinian terrorists and Iraqi insurgents, and maintaining an alliance with Iran – a strategic adversary of the United States.”

In early March, the Obama administration began taking action to reverse historic US policy of isolation towards Syria preferring to directly engage Damascus even if only temporarily to better gauge what Syria is currently thinking. Though US politicians regularly visit Damascus (Speaker Pelosi and Senator John Kerry among others with Congressmen Stephen Lynch, a Democrat, and Republican Bob Inglis meeting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad just this past Sunday), no US diplomat had been since 2005. That all changed in March when Secretary Clinton dispatched two high-ranking emissaries, including former US ambassador to Lebanon Jeffery Feltman and Daniel B. Shapiro, the top Middle East officer at the National Security Council.

Today Syria’s Foreign Minister Walid Moallem praised President Obama’s pledge to pursue a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians as “positive,” but warned the real test for the new American approach in the Middle East was yet to come. More on this from CBS News:

“We welcome the positive speech which indicates a clear inclination towards a two-state solution, including a viable Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital,” Moallem told CBS News on the sidelines of a two-day Alliance of Civilization Conference in Istanbul.

“The speech reflects Washington’s encouragement for a lasting peace settlement on all tracks and signals the importance of the Turkish role in this respect, unlike the position of President Bush who was against the resumption of indirect talks between Syria and Israel,” said Moallem.

But, Moallem (at left) cautioned, “We still need to know the nature of the relationship between the new U.S. administration and the Israeli radical, right-wing government which is rejecting the two-state solution, international resolutions and the Arab peace initiative.”

On the other hand, US-Israeli relations may take a decidedly more confrontational tone. According to Haaretz, the Obama Administration is warning Democratic members of Congress that Obama Administration is expecting a clash with new Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over his refusal to support the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel.

In recent weeks, American officials have briefed senior Democratic congressmen and prepared the ground for the possibility of disagreements with Israel over the peace process, according to information recently received. The administration’s efforts are focused on President Barack Obama’s Democratic Party, which now holds a majority in both the Senate and the House of Representatives.

The preemptive briefing is meant to foil the possibility that Netanyahu may try to bypass the administration by rallying support in Congress.

The message that administration officials have relayed to the congressmen is that President Obama is committed to the security of Israel and intends to continue the military assistance agreement that was signed by his predecessor, George W. Bush.

However, Obama considers the two-state solution central to his Middle East policy, as he reiterated during a speech in Turkey on Monday, and he intends to ask that Netanyahu fulfill all the commitments made by previous governments in Israel: accepting the principle of a Palestinian state; freezing settlement activity; evacuating illegal outposts; and providing economic and security assistance to the Palestinian Authority.

I tend to agree with Bilal Saab of the Brookings Institute who views “the visit of Feltman and Shapiro to Syria represents not a thaw, but merely a de-icing of relations.” The opening is a space to exchange frank views and explore commonalities on which to move forward. A Syrian peace deal with Israel is likely predicated on the return of the Golan Heights and that seems unlikely at this point. Still Syria may content itself with breaking its near decade long isolation and enjoying a productive relationship with the West including an expansion of commercial relations and an easing of trade sanctions. The Obama Administration in a gesture of goodwill granted a waiver allowing Boeing to go ahead with major overhauls of two 747 jetliners belonging to Syria’s state-owned Syrian Arab Airlines. Further improvements, however, are likely predicated on Syria refraining from its traditional disruptive and destabilizing role in Lebanon and from Syrian compliance in the non-proliferation of missile technologies.

However, the de-icing of US-Syrian relations is not the catalyst for the frost that is descending over US-Israeli relations. There the return of the hawkish Likud-led coalition and statements by various members of the new Netanyahu government on settlements, the two-state solution and the Annapolis process are clearly disruptive to the little progress made the past decade. For the moment, US relations with Netanyahu’s Israel seem clouded at best.

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More footage from Romanian television on the disturbances in Moldova.

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Americans United for Change has released a new 30 second spot encouraging Americans to support the President’s budget.

Americans United for Change (AUC) is a 501(c)(4) organization founded in 2005 that supports liberal causes. More on Americans United for Change from Source Watch.

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Al Jazeera’s Shihab Rattansi hosts a special programme looking at the highlights of four days of special coverage of Mexico’s deadly drug war.

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I have yet to be convinced of the social utility of Twitter. However today in Chisinau, the capital of the small and highly divided East European nation of Moldova, Twitter ( #pman) played an instrumental role in the protests against the government that ended in an uprising with the Parliament being burned. From the New York Times:

Using social-networking tools like Facebook and Twitter, young people and nongovernmental organizations “started to spread the word around” to gather in the capital’s central square Monday evening, said Mihai Moscovici, a 25-year-old in Chisinau who has become the main person providing updates in English through Twitter. Only a couple of hundred young people attended that first night, he said.

“It was not a call for protest, but to come to the central square with a candle to mourn for our country electing a dictatorial regime,” he said in a telephone interview on Tuesday.

They agreed to gather the next morning, and word continued to spread online he said.

“The Twitter community in Moldova is not very big — 100 or 200 people. One of the guys said over Twitter that we need to use a tag so people can find our tweets.” And thus the stream of tweets called #pman was born Tuesday morning, an acronym for the name of the Chisinau central square in Romanian — “Piata Marii Adunari Nationale” — that Twitterers used to organize their reports so that the general public could search for them more easily.

“Then everyone started to use this tag,” Mr. Moscovici said. “We said if you want to be up to date on the protests, follow this tag.” Shortly thereafter Mr. Moscovici, who has a master’s degree in communications from the University of Texas at Arlington, began to write his tweets in English.

“Everyone was tweeting in Romanian,” he said. “Somebody needs to broadcast news in English about what is going on over there.”

Mr. Moscovici, who is paid to blog in English for Propeople, a Danish Web design company, said his Internet service was shut down around 2 in the afternoon on Tuesday, but that he could still use his cellphone to access the Internet and add tweets.

During Tuesday’s protests, “the situation got beyond any expectations” and turned violent, he said, adding that they were never meant to take that turn. “If it would be planned in advance, they would have used Molotov cocktails or other bad stuff,” he said about the protests. “Today they didn’t have any tools to fight back, the stones they got from the ground — from the pavement.”

On Tuesday, he said, he added about 200 new followers on Twitter, most of whom he thought were Moldovan. “I believe they just made an account for themselves for today,” he said. “Because of the Twitter explosion, they started to use Twitter.”

As to why Twitter was effective in organizing a protest, Mr. Moscovici said, “When you follow somebody, you usually know this person, so you trust this person — it is coming from a real person, not an institution.”

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A digital revolution is turning the tiny Baltic nation of Estonia into a nation of Internet innovators. Estonians have put their digital identities onto their national identification cards, and much more.

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This footage from Romanian tv station Realitatea TV shows the parliament building in Chisinau, Moldova, on fire tonight after a day of violent clashes between police and anti-communist, pro-democracy protesters.

More from the UK Telegraph:

Moldovan President Vladimir Voronin, Europe’s only Communist leader, called on the West to help restore order and accused the opposition of attempting a coup after violence swept the capital of Europe’s poorest country.

One woman died and about a hundred people were hurt after protesters, who say Sunday’s parliamentary election was rigged, ransacked Mr Voronin’s offices and looted parliament, where fires raged into the night.

Reports from the scene said dozens of riot police in black helmets and bearing shields had regained control of the buildings in central Chisinau during the early hours. The hundreds of demonstrators had dispersed. Some groups of armed special forces troops were also seen in the centre of the capital.

Opposition leaders have condemned the violence but demanded new elections. Some protesters demanded the resignation of Mr Voronin, who is due to step down after the poll because of constitutional limits on a third term.

Official election results put the Communists in front with close to 50 per cent of the vote.

Most of the protesters on the streets of Chisinau were students who say they see no future if Communists keep their hold on the ex-Soviet state of four million people.

Late in the evening, about 600 people were still massed outside parliament. Some had waved European, Romanian and Moldovan flags from the roof of the president’s offices.

A former interior minister, Mr Voronin has overseen stability since 2001, but many Moldovans still live in poverty.

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The President addresses American troops at the Al Faw Palace in Baghdad.

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In Pakistan, the key U.S. diplomat for the region was joined by Americas top military man in calling for more trust between the countries as they fight al-Qaeda and Taliban militants.

Special envoy Richard Holbrooke and Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the joint chiefs, held talks with Pakistan’s foreign minister. They discussed the sometimes strained U.S.-Pakistani relationship and their goals.

One issue that has caused strains in relations between Pakistan and the United States is the continued and expanding use of American drones unmanned, remote-controlled aircraft that can track and attack suspected militants. The New York Times reports that U.S. officials want to step up the use of drones in tribal areas of Pakistan near Afghanistan and are also proposing to expand them to

Baluchistan to the south — plans that have met resistance from Pakistani officials.
Meanwhile, Pakistan finds itself in the middle of a fierce debate about a video of a young woman being whipped in the Swat Valley, an area the government ceded to the Taliban as part of a peace deal.

Arif Rafiq of World Politics Review joins David Brancaccio to discuss dealings with the Taliban, Holbrooke’s trip to Pakistan and what role Pakistan can play in stabilizing Afghanistan as it deals with its own security issues.

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In the United Kingdom, a new study to be released today will show that the legalization and regulation of illicit drugs would save the British taxpayer approximately £14 billion annually. From the UK Guardian:

The regulated legalisation of drugs would have major benefits for taxpayers, victims of crime, local communities and the criminal justice system, according to the first comprehensive comparison between the cost-effectiveness of legalisation and prohibition. The authors of the report, which is due to be published today, suggest that a legalised, regulated market could save the country around £14bn.

For many years the government has been under pressure to conduct an objective cost-benefit analysis of the current drugs policy, but has failed to do so despite calls from MPs. Now the drugs reform charity, Transform, has commissioned its own report, examining all aspects of prohibition from the costs of policing and investigating drugs users and dealers to processing them through the courts and their eventual incarceration.

As well as such savings is the likely taxation revenue in a regulated market. However, there are also the potential costs of increased drug treatment, education and public information campaigns about the risks and dangers of drugs, similar to those for tobacco and alcohol, and the costs of running a regulated system.

The report looked at four potential scenarios, ranging from no increase in drugs use to a 100% rise as they become more readily available.

“The conclusion is that regulating the drugs market is a dramatically more cost-effective policy than prohibition and that moving from prohibition to regulated drugs markets in England and Wales would provide a net saving to taxpayers, victims of crime, communities, the criminal justice system and drug users of somewhere within the range of, for the four scenarios, £13.9bn, £10.8bn, £7.7bn, £4.6bn.”

Titled a Comparison of the Cost-effectiveness of the Prohibition and Regulation of Drugs, the report uses government figures on the costs of crime to assess the potential benefits and disadvantages of change. The document, co-written by Steve Rolles, head of research at Transform, uses home office and No 10 strategy unit reports to form its conclusions.

It finds: “The government specifically claims the benefits of any move away from prohibition towards legal regulation would be outweighed by the costs. No such cost-benefit analysis, or even a proper impact assessment of existing enforcement policy and legislation has ever been carried out here or anywhere else in the world.”

Taxing drugs would also provide big revenue gains, says the survey. An Independent Drug Monitoring Unit estimate, quoted in the report, suggests up to £1.3bn could be generated by a £1 per gram tax on cannabis resin and £2 per gram on skunk.

The report follows calls for legalisation or a full debate on reform. Last month, the Economist concluded: “Prohibition has failed; legalisation is the least bad solution.”

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