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Derechos | Equipo Nizkor
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Derechos | Equipo Nizkor
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28Aug13
Britain to Press U.N. Members to Authorize Action in Syria
As debate intensified on Wednesday over a possible Western military strike in Syria, Prime Minister David Cameron said Britain would propose a resolution at the United Nations accusing the authorities in Damascus of responsibility for a chemical weapons attack and authorizing "all necessary measures" including force to protect civilians.
The diplomacy came as United Nations inspectors in Syria began a second day of efforts on Wednesday to gather evidence about the attack week ago, a development that has pushed Western powers ever closer to retaliatory military action against the government of President Bashar al-Assad.
Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary general, said the inspectors would need four days altogether to complete their work. Speaking to reporters at The Hague, where he was on an official visit, Mr. Ban said the inspectors had already collected many samples and interviewed victims and witnesses.
Foreshadowing a continued stalemate at the United Nations, a senior Russian official was quoted as dismissing the British initiative while the inspectors were still gathering material. "It would be premature, at the least, to discuss any Security Council reaction until the U.N. inspectors working in Syria present their report," the Interfax news agency quoted Deputy Foreign Minister Vladimir Titov as saying, according to Reuters.
In London, Mr. Cameron's office said Britain had "drafted a resolution condemning the chemical weapons attack by Assad" and "authorizing necessary measures to protect civilians."
"We've always said we want the U.N. Security Council to live up to its responsibilities on Syria," a statement said. "Today we are giving its permanent members the opportunity to do that."
Syria has denied using chemical weapons, blaming antigovernment rebels for the attack.
The statement from Mr. Cameron's office said the British draft proposed invoking Chapter 7 of the United Nations Charter, which can be used to authorize the use of force "to maintain or restore international peace and security."
The aim of the measures would be to "protect civilians from chemical weapons," the statement said, but there were no details about what measures Britain envisaged. Mr. Cameron's office also said he spoke late Tuesday with President Obama "to hear the latest U.S. thinking on the issue and to set out the options being considered by the government."
"Both leaders agreed that all the information available confirmed a chemical weapons attack had taken place, noting that even the Iranian president and Syrian regime had conceded this," Mr. Cameron's office said. "And they both agreed they were in no doubt that the Assad regime was responsible. Regime forces were carrying out a military operation to regain that area from the opposition at the time; and there is no evidence that the opposition has the capability to deliver such a chemical weapons attack."
Mr. Cameron, the statement said, told President Obama that Britain "had not yet taken a decision on the specific nature of our response, but that it would be legal and specific to the chemical weapons attack."
In a statement later Wednesday after a meeting of Britain's National Security Council, Mr. Cameron's office said that ministers had agreed that "the Assad regime was responsible for this attack and that the world shouldn't stand idly by." Any response, it said, "should be legal, proportionate and specifically to protect civilians by deterring further chemical weapons use."
The statement added that the National Security Council had agreed "on a recommendation that the Cabinet will consider tomorrow" although it gave no further details.
In a separate declaration after discussions at NATO, the alliance's secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, also sharply criticized Mr. Assad's government, saying that "information available from a wide variety of sources points to the Syrian regime as responsible for the use of chemical weapons in these attacks."
"This is a clear breach of longstanding international norms and practice. Any use of such weapons is unacceptable and cannot go unanswered. Those responsible must be held accountable," the statement added.
As Syria's turmoil has deepened since revolt took root in March 2011 and grew into a bloody civil war, Russia -- a permanent member of the Security Council along with China, the United States, France and Britain -- has steadfastly blocked efforts to subject Mr. Assad's government to military pressure.
On Wednesday, Russian officials continued to warn against international intervention. The foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, spoke by telephone with the United Nations special envoy to Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi, and warned that an attack "will only lead to the further destabilization of the situation in the country and the region," according to a statement posted by the Foreign Ministry.
For his part, Mr. Brahimi told reporters in Geneva on Wednesday that international law required Security Council approval for any military action in Syria. Mr. Brahimi also said the United States and Britain had yet to share what they said was evidence that established Mr. Assad's government had used chemical weapons.
In a further sign of mounting tensions, Russia's Emergency Services Ministry said it was evacuating more Russians and citizens from other former Soviet republics from Syria, where Moscow maintains a naval base and where thousands of its citizens live after decades as the main international sponsor of the government in Damascus.
Russian special flights, sent to Syria with humanitarian supplies, returned with scores of Russians and citizens of Belarus and Ukraine. The Emergency Services Ministry said 75 Russians, along with nine people from Belarus and five from Ukraine, arrived in Moscow late Tuesday, while a second plane carrying 27 more Russians arrived on Wednesday morning.
Russia began evacuating its citizens from Syria in January. Since then 730 have left, most of them women and children. They are only a fraction of the more than 30,000 Russians who are believed to live in Syria, but in the wake of the attacks outside of Damascus, the pace of the evacuations appears to be increasing.
The idea of Western military intervention has also rattled Iran, Syria's main regional ally. Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, told the ISNA state news agency on Wednesday that American intervention would be a "disaster for the region," news reports said.
"The region is like a gunpowder store and the future cannot be predicted," he said.
Britain's latest move seemed to be designed to lay the diplomatic groundwork for action by a coalition of outside forces, led by the United States, if there was no consensus at the United Nations.
United Nations inspectors, who carried out a first visit to collect samples and other evidence on Monday from the Ghouta area east of Damascus, had initially been expected to make their second visit on Tuesday but postponed it because of safety concerns.
On Wednesday, the inspectors arrived in the contested area to cries of "God is Great" from Syrians lining the roadside, according to amateur video posted on YouTube. They drove in a convoy of four white SUVs emblazoned with the initial "UN" in black, approaching rebel positions on what seemed to be a deserted, narrow street lined with apartment houses.
The gathering drumbeat of calls for intervention has alarmed some Britons, including the Most Rev. Justin Welby, archbishop of Canterbury and spiritual head of the world's 77 million Anglicans, who was quoted on Wednesday as urging lawmakers to avoid a rush to judgment about military action that could have "unforeseeable ramifications across the whole Arab and Muslim world."
His remarks sounded a cautionary note that contrasted with the more bullish tone of government leaders ahead of two key gatherings in London: the National Security Council of senior ministers and military commanders on Wednesday and an emergency debate in Parliament on Thursday after Prime Minister Cameron recalled lawmakers early from their summer recess.
In an interview with the Daily Telegraph, Archbishop Welby acknowledged that he had no inside information about what had happened in Syria or what the government has planned. "The government and the Americans are seeing intelligence nobody else sees," he said. "I just think we have to be very careful about rushing to judgment."
Lawmakers should "bear in mind in what is going to be a very, very difficult debate," the archbishop said, asking two questions -- "are we sure about the facts on the ground?" and "is it possible to have a carefully calibrated response including armed force, if you are sure about the facts on the ground, that does not have unforeseeable ramifications across the whole Arab and Muslim world?"
Writing in the same newspaper, however, Foreign Secretary William Hague said a failure to respond "would send a signal to the Syrian regime that they will never face any consequences for their actions, no matter how barbarous. It would make further chemical attacks in Syria much more likely, and also increase the risk that these weapons could fall into the wrong hands in the future.
"This actual, repeated use of chemical weapons in Syria is a moral outrage, a serious violation of international humanitarian law and a challenge to our common security. We are now weighing with the United States and our other allies how to respond in a way that is legal and proportionate. The goal of any response should be to prevent further similar humanitarian distress, to deter the further use of chemical weapons in Syria and to uphold the global ban against their use."
He also repeated his argument that outsiders could take military action without a consensus at the deadlocked United Nations Security Council.
"We cannot allow diplomatic paralysis to be a shield for the perpetrators of these crimes," Mr. Hague said.
Nick Clegg, the deputy prime minister and leader of the junior Liberal Democrat coalition partner, also expressed support for military action. "What we are not considering is regime change, trying to topple the Assad regime, trying to settle the civil war in Syria one way or another," he said in a speech. "That needs to be settled through a political process. We are not considering an open-ended military intervention with boots on the ground like we saw in Iraq. What is being considered are measures which are legal, which are proportionate and which are specific to discouraging and sending out a clear signal that use of chemical weapons in this day and age is simply intolerable."
[Source: By Alan Cowell, Steven Lee Myers And Stephen Castle, The New York Times, London, 28Aug13]
 | This document has been published on 28Aug13 by the Equipo Nizkor and Derechos Human Rights. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. |