By IPS Correspondents
WASHINGTON, May 11 2007 (IPS)

The U.S. State Department has harshly condemned Syria’s sentencing of political prisoner Kamal al-Labwani, one week after Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice broke a two-year diplomatic embargo against Damascus.

A Syrian court sentenced Labwani to 12 years in prison with hard labour for “communicating with a foreign country and inciting it to initiate aggression against Syria”.

A Syrian human rights activist who was embraced by the George W. Bush administration more than a year ago, Labwani was arrested in November 2005 after traveling to the United States and Europe to meet with journalists, government officials and human rights organisations.

In a statement Thursday, State Department spokesperson Sean McCormack said, “This action against Mr. Labwani reflects the Syrian regime’s contempt for human rights and a legal system devoid of legitimate legal standards.”

During his visits, Labwani spoke with the London-based Al-Mustaqilla and U.S.-funded Al-Hurra television networks. He called on the Syrian government to respect fundamental freedoms and human rights.

According to Human Rights Watch, a New York-based advocacy group, Labwani’s charges and the harsh sentence were politically motivated.

The physician founded a Syrian opposition party called the Liberal Democratic Gathering in 2005 in a country where political parties are banned. But the implications of Labwani’s sentencing extend far beyond the man and indeed, internal Syrian politics.

The sentence handed down on May 10 is the harshest penalty from a Syrian court since President Bashar al-Assad took power in 2000. It follows parliamentary elections in Syria in late April that reinstated the ruling National Progressive Front, dominated by Assad’s Baathist party.

The sentencing also comes at a time when Syria is at the centre of regional power brokering. Assad has offered to negotiate peace with Israel, a proposal that has drawn considerable interest in both Syria and the Jewish state. Lebanon remains one of Syria’s top foreign policy priorities and at the same time the country continues to be drawn deeper into the violent conflict in neighbouring Iraq.

The May 3 meeting between Rice and Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem was the first high-level meeting between U.S. and Syrian officials in more than two years. But just days later, the Bush administration extended sanctions on Syria for another year and the United States reiterated its support for an international tribunal on the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in February 2005, a case in which Syria has been implicated.

Following her meeting with the Syrian Foreign Minister, Rice made it clear that the U.S. will engage with Syria on a very limited front, according to Joshua Landis, a Syria expert at University of Oklahoma.

On May 8, she warned in a front page editorial for a Lebanese newspaper that the United Nations would act on its own if the Lebanese parliament failed to endorse setting up such a court. Two days later, Assad defiantly announced that Syria would not recognise such a tribunal if it impeded on Syrian sovereignty, an imposition implicit in the mandate of an international court.

The announcement of Labwani’s harsh penalty also follows the sentencing two weeks before of Anwar al-Bunni, a prominent human rights lawyer who was accused of “spreading false or exaggerated news that weakens the spirit of the nation”. Bunni received five years in prison for his role in the Beirut-Damascus Declaration, which calls for the normalisation of relations between Syria and Lebanon.

Both high-profile sentences are only the most recent in Syria’s recent crackdown on human rights activists and voices of opposition within the country. But it seems that U.S. engagement with Syria doesn’t extend to confronting the country’s human rights record.

Instead, as Rice has indicated, the dialogue is limited only to Syria’s relationship to its neighbours, Iraq and Lebanon. Recent visits to Damascus by Secretary-General of the European Union Javier Solana and U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and a separate delegation of Republican congressmen have failed to raise the state of human rights in Syria.

The discrepancy between Labwani and Bunni’s sentences demonstrates how differently Assad’s administration views the two offenxes, according to Landis.

“I suspect that it’s because Labwani traveled to the U.S…. in an effort to get Washington to turn up the pressure on Syria and this has crossed a red line for the Syrian regime,” Landis, whose blog on Syria is widely read here, told IPS. “Assad is trying to make it clear that any contact and cooperation with the U.S., Syria’s enemy, is treason”.

Labwani’s sentence is also an indication of the influence he’s had on U.S. policy towards Syria. In looking to the U.S. he did something that no other Syrian opposition leader had attempted before. “In the Syrian context Labwani was not an important opposition leader. He was important because he flew to the U.S.,” Landis said.

Just days after he was arrested upon his return to Syria, President Bush mentioned Labwani by name in a November 2005 speech and called on Syria to bring about democratic reform. According to Landis, this was the beginning of the administration’s campaign to bring democracy to Syria.

One of the few voices of dissent within the country that is not anti-U.S., Labwani has been a proponent of democratic reform in Syria for several years. While he has looked to foreign powers to apply pressure to the regime in Syria, he has been careful to differentiate himself from the Syrian Reform Party, an opposition party working out of the United States.

In an interview posted on Landis’s blog, SyriaComment.com, Labwani said, “We are living inside the country so our demands are oriented towards internal affairs… They are interested in being able to come and go freely and in investing. They may be duplicitous because they have two different loyalties – one to Syria and one to America.”

With his party’s call for “democracy, liberalism, and secularism”, it was natural for Washington to embrace him in its campaign to bring democracy to Syria. But, “the fact that Labwani’s sentence is handed down at this time only highlights that Syria is ready to fight,” Landis said.

With Damascus and Washington jockeying for position, Labwani is just one more symbol of the stalemate between the two countries.

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