Bulletin de liaison et d'information - Institut kurde de Paris

38
Revue de Presse-Press Review-Berhevoka Çapê-Rivista Stampa-Dentro de la Prensa-Basin Ozeti
KIHNOTONAL-
ÎUralb^M^Sribunc friday, march is, 2013
France and Britain
push Syrian arms
BRUSSELS
Quick lifting of embargo
on weapons for rebels is
urged before expiration
BY STEVEN ERLANGER
France, joining Britain, is urging its
European Union partners to meet
quickly this month to lift the current
arms embargo on Syria, in order to al¬
low weapons to be sent to the Syrian op¬
position.
President François Hollande of
France, arriving in Brussels for a Euro¬
pean Union summit meeting, said on ar¬
rival that ' 'we want Europeans tolift the
arms embargo."
Echoing earlier comments by his for¬
eign minister, Laurent Fabius, who
called for an early decision by foreign
ministers, Mr. Hollande said: "We are
ready to support the rebellion, so we are
ready to go this far. We must take our re¬
sponsibilities."
He said Britain and France were
agreed. "We cannot allow a people to be
massacred by a regime that for now
does not want a political transition," Mr.
Hollande said.
An E.U. agreement on sanctions and
an arms embargo will expire in any case
at the end of May unless all 27 member
countries agree to continue it, but
France believes that the Union must
move more quickly, to try to shift the
balance of forces in Syria in favor of the
opposition before many more thou¬
sands of people die.
French and British officials have said,
that only once President Bashar al-As-
sad understands that he is losing the
battle will he agree to negotiate a politic¬
al resolution with the opposition. There
"Lifting the embargo is one of
the only ways that remain to
change the situation
politically."
is a sense that the Syrian Army is begin¬
ning to erode, and that it might be possi¬
ble to shift the balance more easily than
before.
If the European Union lifts the arms
embargo and begins to supply antiair¬
craft weapons to the opposition, for ex¬
ample, it would make a new phase of the
two-year Syrian civil war, which is be¬
lieved to have cost the lives of 70,000
people without producing a change in
regime.
Earlier, in Paris, Mr. Fabius warned
that France and Britain might act uni¬
laterally if their European partners dis¬
agreed. Asked on France-Info radio
whether France and Britain would arm
the opposition if there was no agree¬
ment, Mr. Fabius said only that France
was "a sovereign state" and that the
two countries would jointly act "to lift
the embargo."
"We cannot accept that this current
lack ofbalance, with on one side Iran and
Russia delivering arms to Bashàr and on
the other rebels who cannot defend
themselves," Mr. Fabius said, speaking
of the Syrian leader. "Lifting the em¬
bargo is one ofthe only ways that remain
to change the situation politically."
On Tuesday, Prime Minister David
Cameron said that while Britain would
obey the embargo, it might act if its
partners did not agree to lift it. "It is not
impossible that we'll proceed the way
we see fit," he declared.
Together, the comments suggested
that Britain and France, Europe's
strongest powers, might act alone. After
all, the two countries pushed for inter¬
vention in Libya and France recently in¬
tervened in Mali without European Un¬
ion agreement. But in fact the two
countries now seem to be lobbying their
E.U. colleagues rather than declaring
complete independence of action.
French officials said that France did
not intend to act in violation of the E.U.
consensus, but that France wanted to put
pressure on its partners to shift ground
quickly, before the embargo expires at
the end of May. French public opinion
has been shaken by the vicious and
seemingly stalemated civil war in Syria,
with which France has historic ties, and
there are new concerns about the stabil¬
ity of Lebanon, even as thousands of
refugees continue to pour out of Syria.
In a statement on Thursday, the Brit¬
ish Foreign Office said that internation¬
al effort for a political solution in Syria
"has little chance of gathering mo
mentum unless the regime feels com¬
pelled to come to the negotiating table."
"They need to feel that the balance on
the ground has shifted against them," it
added. Referring to the arms embargo,
the statement said, "We are not pre¬
pared to rule out any options to bring an
end to the suffering of millions of inno¬
cent Syrians."
British and French officials also sense
that Washington's strict opposition to
helping the Syrian rebels militarily may
be shifting in President Barack
Obama's second term. The new U.S. sec¬
retary of state, John Kerry, made his
first overseas tour this month with Syr¬
ia as a prime topic, and his discussions
included the British and the French,
who said they found him sympathetic to
their views.
While Mr. Kerry repeated that the
United States would not arm the rebels,
Washington has sent direct medical and
humanitarian aid to them and there are
reports, most recently in Der Spiegel,
that some Syrian opposition fighters are
being supplied with weapons from the
Gulf and trained in Jordan by Ameri¬
cans.
The rebels want ground-to-air mis¬
siles to use against the Syrian Air Force
and sophisticated anti-tank missiles,
but the United States has opposed such
supplies, even from other nations like
Qatar and Saudi Arabia, out of concern
that these weapons will fall into the
hands of more radical Islamist fighters
and could be used against other Ameri¬
can allies, like Israel and Jordan.
E.U. foreign ministers are supposed
to meet in mid-May, but France has
asked that the meeting be rescheduled
sooner, Mr. Fabius said, to review the
embargo.
The German foreign minister, Guido
Westerwelle, said in a statement that
Berlin was ready to discuss the issue. "If
important partners in the European Un¬
ion now think the situation has changed
and they think this makes it necessary
to change the decisions on sanctions, we
are of course prepared to discuss this in
the E.U. immediately," he said.
Russia, which has supplied helicopters
and other military equipment to Damas¬
cus, warned that supplying arms to the
rebels would violate international law.