DAMASCUS, Feb. 17 -- Syrian President Hafez Assad met Saturday with Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, a presidential spokesman said, after the U.S. sect's leader reportedly again criticized his own country, this time for the 'wicked' U.S. economic sanctions against Iraq. Farrakhan, in Damascus for three days of meetings, met Assad along with Grand Mufti Ahmad Kaftaro, spokesman Gibran Kurieh told United Press International. Farrakhan said there is a need for a reconciling and opening borders among antagonistic Arab countries 'so that the powerful Islamic nation can regainits true standing in the world,' Kurieh said. Farrakhan was accompanied by a large delegation from his Nation of Islam, the sect formerly known as Black Muslims, as he arrived by land Friday over the Syrian-Iraqi border, which had been closed since 1981, when Syria accused Iraq of links with bombings in Syria. Before leaving Baghdad, the Times of London said Saturday, Farrakhan accused the United States of ensuring 'the mass murder of the Iraqi people' with the sanctions. Following previous inflamatory comments by the touring sect leader in Libya, Sudan, Iran, Nigeria and South Africa, Farrakhan expressed bitter opposition to the economic sanctions that the United Nations has imposed upon Iraq since it invaded Kuwait in 1990, the newspaper said. The U.S. insistence that the sanctions remain in place until Iraq complies with all U.N. disarmament resolutions 'is a very wicked policy that must be stopped immediately,' the newspaper said. The sanctions have caused severe shortages of food and medicine in Iraq, leading Farrakhan to say: 'The mass murder of the Iraqi people must cease,' according to the Times.
The State Department issued a statement Wednesday calling Farrakhan's willingness to 'cavort with dictators' during his tour 'shameful,' then confirmed Friday that Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan and Syria remain on the U.S. list of countries that support international terrorism. Nicholas Burns, the department's spokesman, said the government- controlled news media in countries Farrakhan has visited have quoted him urging the overthrow of the U.S. government. On Wednesday, a hard-line Iranian newspaper, Kayhan, quoted Farrakhan as saying that 'God will destroy America by the hands of Muslims.' The State Department also wrote a letter to Farrakhan at his Chicago headquarters this week, which warned warned that he must register with the government if he acts as an agent for Libya, the Times said. The letter was in response to a report by the Libyan News Agency last month that Farrakhan had accepted an offer of $1 billion from Libya's leader, Col. Moammar Gadhafi, to influence U.S. elections. The black leader has denied that any such pledge had been made to him, but did confirm that Gadhafi had said Sept. 1 in a speech in Tripoli that he was promising $1 billion 'to the impowerment of blacks, Muslims and Arabs in the United States.' 'The blood of Americans is on the hands of Gadhafi and the Iranians, ' Burns said, referring to 1988's explosion of a jetliner over Lockerbie, Scotland, in which two Libyan agents are wanted and Iranian financing is suspected.
