The Obama administration said Tuesday that it would take new steps to ease American sanctions against Syria on a case-by-case basis, the latest sign of a diplomatic thaw.
Administration officials said the message was conveyed to President Bashar al-Assad of Syria on Sunday in Damascus by President Obama’s Middle East envoy, George J. Mitchell. Mr. Mitchell said the American government would try to expedite the process for obtaining individual exemptions to the sanctions, which prohibit the export of all American products to Syria except food and medicine.
The move will particularly affect “requests to export products related to information technology and telecommunication equipment and parts and components related to the safety of civil aviation,” said a State Department spokesman, Andrew J. Laine.
While the shift does not change the letter of the law of the sanctions, which were passed by Congress in 2003 and cannot be modified without Congressional consent, administration officials said it was significant because it indicated a change in how the White House would view requests by companies for waivers to sell their wares to Syria.
It is also another notable instance of the Obama administration opening the door to Syria on what it calls a basis of mutual interest and respect — and as part of a broader strategy of trying to get the country to turn away from its alliances with Iran and Islamic militant groups. In June, the administration said it would send an ambassador to Syria for the first time since 2005.
Under the Syria Accountability Act, as the sanctions are known, the president can work through the Commerce Department to grant exemptions for national security reasons in one of six categories, including one that allows for the sale of airplane parts to ensure safe civil aviation. Under the Bush administration, however, a limited number of such exemptions were granted.
“We are going to look at these waivers, especially on airplane spare parts, and our predisposition is going to be, view them favorably, as opposed to the prior administration’s policy,” said a senior administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter.
The decision to move toward eased sanctions was first reported Tuesday in The Wall Street Journal.
The sanctions have powerful backers in Congress, and the initial reaction against any effort to ease them was swift.
Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida, the ranking Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said she was “deeply troubled that the United States would make unilateral concessions to the Syrian regime and ease pressure on Damascus, even as the State Department recently reported to Congress that Syria continues to pursue advanced missile and chemical, biological and nuclear weapons capabilities and to sponsor violent Islamist extremist groups like Hezbollah and Hamas.”
Representative Eliot L. Engel, a Democrat from New York, who helped write the sanctions bill, said that while granting such exemptions was “perfectly legal” under the act, he would urge caution. “Syria, from what I can see, has not changed its spots,” he said.
Mr. Mitchell’s weekend visit to Syria for talks with Mr. Assad was his second trip there in two months. Administration officials said that Mr. Mitchell and Mr. Assad also tentatively agreed that a future delegation from the United States Central Command and Iraq would travel to Damascus, Syria’s capital, and discuss greater cooperation in securing the Syria-Iraq border against insurgent traffic, a high priority of the Obama administration.
