SYRIA FINANCES INSURGENCY WAR AGAINST U.S.

WASHINGTON [MENL] -- The United States has quietly determined that Syria helped finance the Sunni insurgency in Iraq.

Officials said the regime of President Bashar Assad has used the state-owned Commercial Bank of Syria to relay hundreds of millions of dollars to Saddam Hussein loyalists in Iraq. They said the money has been employed to finance the insurgency against the U.S.-led coalition primarily in Iraq's Sunni Triangle.

The Commercial Bank of Syria held more than $1 billion in Saddam regime accounts on the eve of the U.S.-led war in Iraq in March 2003, officials said. Most of that money stemmed from Iraqi arms and oil smuggling as well as illegal commissions obtained from Iraqi oil sales overseen by the United Nations.

Officials said that over the last 18 months Damascus transferred up to $800 million of Saddam's assets to senior aides of the former president, several of whom have been based in Syria. They said much of the money was believed to have been transferred to ex-Iraqi Vice President Izzet Ibrahim Al Douri, identified as the chief financier of the Sunni insurgency.
http://www.menewsline.com/stories/2004/november/11_18_1.html