The United States does not provide Syria with bilateral assistance and does not support loans for Syria in multilateral institutions. Syria is a party to the 1988 UN Convention. Syria does not have a bilateral narcotics agreement with the United States. There were continuing reports that Syrian military and security personnel personally profited from the drug trade in 1995. Syria remained a transit site for drugs processed within Lebanon or imported from third countries.
Lebanese hashish transits Syria en route to Egypt and the Gulf region.
Syria did not prevent the transit of opium and morphine base from South West Asia through Syria to heroin processing laboratories in Lebanon. Country Action Against Drugs in 1995 Policy Initiatives. There were no new policy initiatives in 1995, but the Syrian Government continued to implement its stiff 1993 drug law. Syrian counternarcotics police arrested almost 1,800 suspects on drug charges. There were also at least four ongoing cases from previous years in which the defendants faced the death penalty for trafficking.