The Road From Damascus

By Amy Wilentz

While the leaders of the seven major industrial democracies were weighing in with a pointed denunciation of state-authorized terrorism--particul arly Libyan terrorism--evidence was mounting last week that another Middle Eastern nation had recently sponsored a series of wellpublicized terror attacks.

The bombs in these cases were thought to be made in Damascus. From the Syrian capital they were transported to the Syrian embassies in East Berlin and London. Their alleged targets: the German-Arab Friendship Society in West Berlin (blown up on March 29), an El Al jet en route from London to Tel Aviv with 360 aboard (saved by an alert El Al baggage inspector), and possibly the La Belle discotheque, also in West Berlin (destroyed on April 5, killing a U.S. Army sergeant and a Turkish woman and injuring 230). The prime suspects are two Syrian-trained Palestinian brothers, Achmed Nawaf Mansour Hazi and Nezar Nawaf Mansour Hindawi.

The allegations against Syria present a thorny policy problem for the U.S. After all, it was what the Reagan Administration called "irrefutable evidence" of Libyan complicity in the La Belle attack that led the U.S. to send its warplanes against Muammar Gaddafi's country. What if Syria were also involved? At a news conference last week, President Reagan said, "If we have the same kind of evidence with regard to other countries, they will be subject to the same treatment."

The evidence against Syria is tangled but persuasive. Hindawi was arrested in London shortly after the El Al plot was foiled. U.S. intelligence officers believe he was a Syrian intelligence recruit who tried to send his unsuspecting Irish girlfriend onto the El Al flight carrying a bag lined with explosives. His brother Hazi, in custody in West Berlin, has confessed to the attack on the friendship society. Inside the Syrian embassy in East Berlin, Hazi claims, he was given advice and "tactical guidance" on bomb preparation and timing devices. Hazi has denied any involvement in the La Belle explosion. Nonetheless, West German police reported that the disco explosives closely resembled the bomb that wrecked the friendship society.

Though Syrian President Hafez Assad has so far been cleverer than Gaddafi in covering his tracks, revelations of a possible Syrian role in the El Al attempt have raised the already high level of tension between Israel and Syria. Israeli Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin told TIME last week that he believed "the decision about this crazy murderous act was taken at a relatively high level" in the Syrian government. Syria's support of terrorism "increased the danger" of a military confrontation, he warned, but he stressed that Israel does not intend to go to war with its neighbor.

Damascus meanwhile refused British requests to waive the diplomatic immunity of three Syrian diplomats in London suspected of complicity in the El Al bombing attempt, though it denied any involvement in "alleged terrorist activities on British soil." On Saturday the three were expelled from Britain. Damascus has also denied participating in the West Berlin attacks. Administration officials acknowledged that no matter how "irrefutable" the evidence against Damascus becomes, the possibility of direct U.S. military attacks on Syrian targets is remote. Syria's close ties to the Soviet Union and pivotal role in the volatile Middle East, they point out, make it a more formidable geopolitical adversary. But they are hopeful that the U.S. attack on Libya will discourage Syria and other nations from contemplating terrorist attacks against American targets. "The Syrians," said one White House official, perhaps wishfully, "got the message."

With reporting by Clive Freeman/Berlin and David Halevy/Washington