johalputt: Julian Borger

UK foreign secretary hits back at Bashar al-Assad after Syrian leader accuses Britain of resuming a 'bullying' colonial role

Britain's foreign secretary, William Hague, labelled President Bashar al-Assad "delusional" on Sunday after the Syrian leader attacked the British government for its "shallow and immature rhetoric", which he said highlighted a "tradition of bullying and hegemony".

In an interview with the Sunday Times, many of Assad's remarks were aimed at the British government, which has taken the lead in Europe in pushing for the easing of the ban on arming the rebels. Assad accused the UK of resuming a "bullying" colonial role.

Hague responded by telling the BBC's Andrew Marr Show: "This will go down as one of the most delusional interviews that any national leader has given in modern times."

In the interview, Assad qualified the offer of peace talks made last week in Moscow by his foreign minister, Walid Muallem, saying it was restricted to those opponents who laid down their weapons. He described all rebel forces in Syria as al-Qaida terrorists.

"We are ready to negotiate with anyone, including militants who surrender their arms. We are not going to deal with terrorists who are determined to carry weapons, to terrorise people, to kill civilians, to attack public places or private enterprise and to destroy the country," Assad said. "Opposition groups should be loyal and patriotic to Syria.

"The British government wants to send military aid to moderate groups in Syria, knowing all too well that such moderate groups do not exist in Syria; we all know that we are now fighting al-Qaida or Jabhat al-Nusra, which is an offshoot of al-Qaida, and other groups of people indoctrinated with extreme ideologies. This is beyond hypocritical," Assad said.

Following warnings from Hague last week that he would not rule out supplying arms to the opposition, Assad attacked the British government for its "shallow and immature rhetoric", which he said highlighted a "tradition of bullying and hegemony".

The idea of the UK helping broker a peace deal was like expecting "an arsonist to be a firefighter".

"I am being frank," the president said. "How can we expect to ask Britain to play a role while it is determined to militarise the problem? How can you ask them to play a role in making the situation better and more stable, how can we expect them to make the violence less while they want to send military supplies to the terrorists and don't try to ease the dialogue between the Syrians."

The interview followed a few weeks during which hopes rose that peace negotiations might be possible. The National Coalition leader, Moaz al-Khatib, said the rebels would be ready to enter talks with their earlier insistence that Assad step down first. But he said that more than 160,000 political prisoners should be released as a precondition.

Opposition leaders have since become more confident that the western embargo on arms deliveries to their forces is about to collapse, pushing the balance in a stalemated conflict in their favour. In his remarks on Sunday, Hague repeated his belief the weapons ban was not sustainable if the bloodshed continued.

"I don't rule out anything for the future. If this is going to go on for months, or years, and more tens of thousands of people are going to die, and countries like Iraq and Lebanon and Jordan are going to be destabilised, it is not something we can ignore," the foreign secretary said.

"If ever we get into that situation [of supplying weapons to the opposition] the risks of arms falling into the wrong hands is one of the great constraints. And it is one of the reasons we don't do it now. But these things are a balance of risk. You can reach consensus eventually when humanitarian need is so great and the loss of life is so great that you have to do something new to save lives. That's why I don't rule it out in the future.

Bashar al-Assad

William Hague

Syria

Middle East and North Africa

Julian Borger

via The Guardian World News http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/mar/03/syria-assad-delusional-william-hague

06:20

Syrian foreign minister criticises 'double standards' after US announces it will provide non-lethal aid to opposition

Syria and Iran have condemned a move by the US to give non-lethal aid to rebels fighting to topple the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, accusing Washington of double standards.

"I do not understand how the United States can give support to groups that kill the Syrian people," the Syrian foreign minister, Walid al-Moualem, told a news conference on Saturday in Tehran with Ali Akbar Salehi, Iran's foreign minister.

"This is nothing but a double-standard policy … One who seeks a political solution does not punish the Syrian people." The United States said on Thursday it would for the first time give non-lethal aid to Syrian rebels, describing the aid as a way to bolster the rebels' popular support.

The assistance will include medical supplies, food for rebel fighters and $60m to help the civil opposition provide basic services such as security, education and sanitation.

Iran's Salehi said the US move would prolong the Syrian conflict, an uprising-turned-civil war in which 70,000 people have been killed.

"If you really feel sorry about the ongoing situation in Syria you should force the opposition to sit at the negotiation table with the Syrian government and put an end to bloodshed," he said. "Why do you encourage the opposition to continue these acts of violence?"

Iran and Russia support Assad, while the US, Europe and Middle Eastern countries generally back the opposition.

Some European countries are expected to break with Washington and start supplying the Syrian rebels with weapons in the next few months, the representative of the Syrian opposition in Britain said.

The National Coalition's London representative, Walid Saffour, predicted that by the next meeting of the western and Arab Friends of Syria group in Turkey, due in late spring or early summer, "there will be a breakthrough that will end the restrictions of the European countries".

"This would be for the ammunition we require, the quality weapons we need to deter the Syrian regime from using aeroplanes and Scud missiles to bomb villages and bakeries," Saffour said. "We on the ground are advancing steadily but we are suffering from a lack of ammunition. We expect that to change at the next Friends of Syria meeting in Istanbul."

Another opposition figure involved in supplying the rebels said there had been a noticeable relaxation in recent days of the strict restrictions the US and Turkey had put on arms flows over the Turkish border. He claimed a Syrian army helicopter and a Mig warplane had been shot down in the past two days, for the first time by imported missiles.

"These were not weapons that had been captured from Syrian army bases as before. These were released from the Turkish warehouses. These are weapons the opposition had purchased previously but had not been allowed to take across the border," the opposition source said.

"Before, 23mm was the maximum calibre for anti-aircraft guns permitted and we were allowed to bring in RPGs [rocket-propelled grenades] but not armour-piercing shells. But there is a major shift on the ground now. The policy is changing.

"I think the shift in American attitudes goes far beyond the official reports. I think that Washington knows it can no longer allow the to problem fester."