| Syria spy chief says he
has no foreign assets for US to freeze BEIRUT,
Lebanon - Syria's former military intelligence chief in Lebanon, subjected to a US assets
freeze last week, insisted in comments published Sunday that he had "not one
cent" abroad for Washington to block.
"I have not one cent outside Syria and let anyone who says otherwise come up with the
proof," Rustom Ghazali told the Saudi-owned London daily Asharq al-Awsat.
"This decision is aimed at stoking up the pressure on Syria -- it's not me who is
being targeted but the country."
On Thursday, the US Treasury Department put both Ghazali and Interior Minister Ghazi
Kanaan on its list of "specially designated nationals" under a presidential
anti-terrorism order.
"Today's designation freezes any assets the designees may have located in the United
States and prohibits US persons from engaging in transactions with these
individuals," the department said.
The move came with Damascus in US cross-hairs on a raft of issues, from its alleged
failure to stop insurgent infiltration of Iraq or withdraw fully from neighbouring
Lebanon, to its support for Palestinian militant groups.
The freeze sparked an angry reaction from Damascus which accused Washington of trying to
deflect attention from three days of Israeli bombardment of south Lebanon following the
death of a soldier in a disputed border zone. |
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