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Relations between the United States and Syria are starting to improve after some tense years. But as Lina Sinjab reports from Damascus, Syrians are still unhappy about US sanctions that affect their daily lives.

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KATY CLARK: Elsewhere in the Middle East today, U.S. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs William Burns met with Syria’s President al-Bashar Assad.   Burns is the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit Syria since 2005.  That’s when Washington recalled its ambassador and imposed sanctions against Damascus for its ties with Iran and militant groups Hamas and Hezbollah.  Those sanctions remain, and that could make it hard for the two countries to move forward, despite the appointment of a new U.S. Ambassador to Syria. The BBC’s Lina Sinjab reports.

LINA SINJAB: The sound you can hear is one of just three functioning aircraft Syrian Air has left.  The fleet has been crippled by U.S. sanctions.  Whether spare parts or whole planes, U.S. law makes it almost impossible for Syria to maintain its national carrier.  And they can’t buy planes from Europe either, though they’ve tried.  The U.S. five years ago imposed sanctions preventing the sale of any goods with more than ten percent American-made materials.  Another sector affected by the sanctions is high tech.  Abdul Ghani Attar is IBM’s sole representative in Syria.

ABDUL GHANI ATTAR: Whether it is hardware or software, we’re talking laptops, computers, big servers, applications.  Anything related to that, you cannot now ship to Syria directly.

SINJAB: Banking has been hit hard, too. The U.S. blocks any transactions with Syria’s state-owned bank.  The Obama Administration says it’s trying to be more flexible than President Bush by waiving the rules on certain goods, like medicines.  But to lift the sanctions fully would require the consent of Congress and that’s not likely to happen.  There is no better symbol of why the U.S. still has greater problems with Syria than this.  I’m at a stadium in the center of Damascus, and Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic militant movement is holding a huge rally.  The movement’s leader, Khaled Meshaal, who lives freely in Damascus, is about to address the crowd.

The Syrian government sees Hamas, and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah as legitimate resistance movements against Israel, and uses the militant groups as proxies to make its voice heard in regional affairs.  But U.S. sanctions have done nothing to change Syrian policy, according to Sami Mubayed.  He is Editor of Forward Magazine, a publication that tends to take the government line.

SAMI MUBAYED: Have these sanctions worked?  Politically, they have not gotten the Syrians to change any of their behavior or alliances, but if we’re talking psychologically, the damage has been done, and yes, it has been very effective.

SPOKESWOMAN: The United States has one ear.  This ear is to Israel.

SINJAB: An unusual visit to Damascus by a group of students from the United States, Citizen Diplomats, they call themselves, attending here an address by the Syrian Presidential Spokeswoman.

SPOKESWOMAN: I don’t think that relations have been only focused on Syrian-American issues. They have always something to do with the Arab-Israeli conflict.

SINJAB: A chasm still exists between the two countries, but bridges are slowly being built after the isolation of the Bush years.  President Obama’s Under Secretary of State met with Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad today and said talks were candid.  The U.S. has just appointed Robert Ford as its new Ambassador to Damascus after five years of low diplomatic representation. In 2005, the United States withdrew its Ambassador following the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri.  Damascus was blamed for the killing, an accusation that Syria has repeatedly denied.  For The World, I’m Lina Sinjab in Damascus.

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