Parliament Debates Action Against Syria:
The British prime minister, David Cameron, and the Labour Party leader,
Ed Miliband, led the discussion on possible military intervention in
Syria, after chemical attacks last week.
By ANNE BARNARD
Published: August 29, 2013
BEIRUT, Lebanon — Members of the Syrian Parliament issued an open letter
to their British counterparts on Thursday, warning them that an
international military strike on Syria would recklessly and illegally
“plunge secular Syria, and indeed the whole region, into a cataclysm of
sectarian mass murder” and inviting them to visit with their own
chemical weapons experts to check the conclusions of the United Nations
investigators now in the country.
Related
The letter, which the lawmakers asked be read at a British parliamentary
session on Thursday on the proposed strike, was in keeping with a
Syrian government strategy of stressing what it sees as values and goals
it shares with the West, including secularism and fighting terrorism.
The letter condemned the chemical attack last week “without
reservation,” without repeating the government’s attempts to blame
Syrian rebels for it, and promised Parliament’s own investigation.
The document, a copy of which was obtained from a Syrian businessman
close to the government, was addressed to the Parliament speaker, John
Bercow. “Mr. Bercow received the letter today and responded, saying that
he has deposited it in the library of the House of Commons where it can
be read by members of Parliament,” said a spokeswoman for the House of
Commons, who asked not to be named in line with standard parliamentary
policy.
The writers invoked the 1914 assassination that set off World War I and
of the invasion of Iraq in 2003, declaring, “Local tragedies become
regional wars that explode into global conflict because of breakdowns in
communication.”
The letter noted that thousands of British soldiers had been killed and
wounded in Afghanistan and Iraq, adding that the Iraq invasion was based
on “the dodgy dossier” of evidence that Saddam Hussein possessed
chemical weapons, which were later found not to exist. They also warned
that British parliamentarians would be “held personally legally liable”
for all damage, and promised to follow up with a letter to Britain’s
attorney general.
Inviting the British lawmakers echoed a strategy that Hussein’s
government employed in Iraq, inviting foreign opponents of the
American-led invasion to Baghdad to be a kind of voluntary human shield.
The letter was signed by Jihad Allaham, the speaker of the Syrian
People’s Assembly, which was elected during the conflict in June 2012 in
polling that the opposition regards as tainted by government
restrictions on political parties.
The communication comes on a day when American officials plan to present the intelligence evidence
for their certainty that the government of President Bashar al-Assad
was behind chemical attacks that killed hundreds outside Damascus last
week.
The writers addressed their counterparts “as fathers and mothers,” and
“as members of families and communities really not so different to
yours.” It praised Britain as “a very old and well-established democracy
that is a model for us” — an assertion that contrasts with the lack of
political freedoms and legal rights in Syria even before the current
conflict, which began when the government violently suppressed a
movement for political rights.
The letter said an attack would be illegal because Syria is a sovereign
state that poses no threat to Britain, because the United Nations has
not sanctioned an attack and because the United Nations report has not
been issued. It also reasserted Syria’s allegations that chemical
weapons were used by the Nusra Front, an extremist rebel group linked to
Al Qaeda, in an earlier episode and said that the United Nations had
concluded there was “strong evidence” for that — apparently a reference
to unsanctioned remarks several months ago by Carla Del Ponte, a United
Nations official not directly involved in the investigation.
An attack on Syria, the letter said, would “strengthen our common enemy,
Al Qaeda.” It urged implementation of United Nations Security Council
Resolutions 1373 and 1624 against terrorism and concluded, “Instead of
being enemies, we should be allies, and walk the road to peace, truth
and reconciliation together.”
Nenhum comentário:
Postar um comentário