Netanyahu warns against including PA, Syria, Iran

WASHINGTON (September 21) - Former prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu, testifying before the House Government Reform Committee, said yesterday that if the US includes terrorism-sponsoring regimes like Syria, Iran, or the Palestinian Authority in a coalition against worldwide terrorism, then the alliance "will be defeated from the beginning."

Such a coalition, Netanyahu said, "will preclude possibility of overall victory" and "will melt down because of its own internal contradictions."

Netanyahu, who received unprecedented applause at the end of his testimony, called for the US to take a wide approach in its war against international terrorism, which is undoubtedly sustained by support of sovereign states.

The hearing was called to examine possible US responses to last week's terror attacks on the US, and Netanyahu, who authored a book on terrorism, was summoned as an expert.

"Take away all the state support and the entire scaffolding of international terrorism will collapse into the dust," Netanyahu said. "The international terrorist network is based on regimes - on Iraq, on Iran, on Syria, on Taliban Afghanistan,Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority, and several other Arab regimes such as the Sudan."

Netanyahu counseled that the price of admission to the coalition should be the complete dismantling of terrorist networks within a country or entity's borders. For PA Chairman Arafat, that would mean crushing Hamas and Islamic Jihad, shutting down training camps for suicide bombers, and reining in Fatah fighters.

Referring to pledges of solidarity from countries defined by the US as state sponsors of terrorism, Netanyahu called such promises of support disingenuous and motivated by fear.

Sensing a move by some to draw a distinction between the suicide terrorism the US suffered last week and the suicide bombings Israel has endured, Netanyahu said the US should not legitimate certain acts of terrorism by saying some are "based on sympathy with this or that cause."

If the US does so, he said, it will lose the "moral clarity" in defining terrorism that is necessary for victory.

"We... must make all states play by the same rules. Nothing justifies terrorism. Nothing," he said, in apparent response to those who have tried to justify Palestinian terrorist attacks as moves of resistance against Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, and to distinguish between Palestinian suicide bombings and the kind of terrorism that struck America.

Netanyahu also said he believes terrorists drew inspiration from Israel's hasty withdrawal from south Lebanon, orchestrated by his erstwhile political foe Ehud Barak in May 2000.

"The success of terrorists in one part of the terror network emboldens terrorists throughout the network," he said.

He argued that Taliban-sheltered terrorist Osama bin Laden, the prime suspect in last week's terror attacks on the US, is primarily motivated to carry out jihad against the US because of the US presence in the Arabian peninsula, and what bin Laden perceives as continued US aggression against Iraq.

"Israel is really a sideshow. America is the target," he said.

Many commentators have said in recent days that Israel's treatment of the Palestinians and US support for Israel have further motivated bin Laden. The US in turn has pressured both Israel and the Palestinians to keep things quiet and to move ahead with peace moves so as not to impede coalition building efforts.

Netanyahu, aligning himself with those like Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz - who would like the US war to include action against Iraq, a terrorist-sponsoring state bent on acquiring weapons of mass destruction - warned that a failure to preempt acquisition by Iraq or Iran of such capabilities would lead to hundreds of thousands of casualties.

"America must be prepared to march forward without" those allies who shy away from these wider goals, he said.

American diplomats, led by Secretary of State Colin Powell, have counseled a step-by-step approach in the war against terrorism that strikes first at Afghanistan and bin Laden's Qaida network. Powell fears that targeting Iraq would fray coalition building efforts.