PRESIDENT MURSI caused a Syrian walk-out at the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) meeting in Tehran yesterday when he attacked the Syrian government and supported the US-UK-France drive to overthrow it, calling it a revolution, and comparing it to the Palestinian revolution.
Mursi, a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, told the summit of the NAM that the Syrian uprising is a ‘revolution against an oppressive regime’, adding that the NAM had an ‘ethical duty’ to support the uprising.
The response of the Syrian delegation at the conference was to walk out after these provocative pro-imperialist positions were put, that both glorified the attempts of the imperialist powers to smash the Ba’athist, anti-imperialist and anti-Zionist government in Syria, and slandered the Palestinian revolution by equating it with the actions of pro-imperialist terrorists.
Mursi used his speech to tell delegates: ‘Our solidarity with the struggle of the Syrian people against an oppressive regime that has lost its legitimacy is an ethical duty as it is a political and strategic necessity.’
He added: ‘We all have to announce our full solidarity with the struggle of those seeking freedom and justice in Syria, and translate this sympathy into a clear political vision that supports a peaceful transition to a democratic system of rule that reflects the demands of the Syrian people for freedom.’
He compared the anti-Assad forces to the Palestinians, saying they were both ‘actively seeking freedom, dignity and human justice’.
The Syrian government is both nationalist and secular and is a bulwark against Zionist Israel, with whom Egypt has signed a peace treaty and with whom Egypt collaborates to this day, with Mursi at the helm.
The Syrian government has provided refuge to hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees caused by the same Zionist regime that Mursi is currently working with, upholding the Camp David Treaty and supplying it with gas.
In fact, Iran cut ties with President Anwar Sadat’s administration precisely over its signing of the peace treaty with Israel.
Syria’s NAM delegation walked out of the conference room when Mursi began speaking about the conflict, Egyptian and Syrian media reported.
However, the Iranian media denied there had been a walk-out, and wants to pretend that nothing of the sort happened.
Mursi, the Egyptian president, in fact works arm-in-arm with the same Egyptian military that kept Mubarak in power and annually receives billions of US dollars so that it can continue to dominate Egyptian society, and act as a partner of Israel.
In making this intervention at the NAM summit, Mursi was in fact strengthening his bridges with the US, and Israel, as well as his own military – that he is a man that they can all trust.
Comparing the pro-imperialist forces in Syria – armed, maintained and led by the US-UK-France-Turkey- Qatar and Saudi regimes – to the Palestinian revolution is the ultimate insult to the Palestinian masses, who have been fighting imperialism and Zionism since the 1930s.
It remains, without doubt, that the removal of the Assad regime, and its replacement by a US-French-UK puppet Islamic regime, would be a huge setback for the Palestinian masses, and be a huge strengthening of Israel, as well as a big step forward for the imperialist war drive, to go from destroying Syrian sovereignty, to smashing Hezbollah in the Lebanon and removing the present Iranian leadership, laying hold of the oil wealth of the entire Gulf.
This is why the News Line stands for the victory of Assad, the defeat of the imperialist drive to turn Syria into another Libya, and for the Egyptian masses, led by the working class, to drive forward to overthrow the rule of Mursi and the military in Egypt, and establish a workers’ and small farmers’ government that will tear up the Camp David Treaty, give full support to the Palestinian revolution and help drive imperialism out of the Middle East.
