ELEVEN Western and Middle Eastern powers on Thursday warned Syrian President Bashar al-Assad against holding elections, saying that the vote would have no credibility amid the country’s brutal civil war.
In a joint statement, the 11 core members of so-called Friends of Syria urged Assad instead to embrace a plan outlined in Geneva talks that includes a transitional government as a way out of the three-year war.
‘Elections organised by the Assad regime would be a parody of democracy, would reveal the regime’s rejection of the basis of the Geneva talks and would deepen the division of Syria,’ said the statement, as issued by the US State Department.
The 11 nations include Western powers the United States, Britain, France, Germany and Italy as well as key regional opponents of Assad: Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates. Arab powers Egypt and Jordan are also part of the group, which does not include Assad’s allies Russia and Iran.
The statement said that a credible election would be impossible with millions of Syrians displaced.
‘Bashar al-Assad intends these elections to sustain his dictatorship,’ it said.
‘An electoral process led by Assad, whom the United Nations considers to have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity, mocks the innocent lives lost in the conflict,’ it said.
Assad – whose family has ruled Syria for more than four decades – has not announced his candidacy in elections expected before July but is widely expected to run. The US State Department earlier described Assad’s prospective re-election campaign as ‘disgusting.’
Meanwhile, the head of the joint mission of the United Nations and the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, Sigrid Kaag, told the UN Security Council (UNSC) on the disposal of chemical weapons in Syria that everything is going well, Syrian Permanent Representative to the UN Bashar al-Jaafari has reported.
In a press conference after Kaag’s briefing at the UNSC, al-Jaafari added however that Kaag also said that it will not be possible to comply with the deadlines fully unless the security situation in Syria remains stable.
Kaag told the UNSC that at this moment mortars are falling on Damascus and Lattakia port. He stressed that those who have an influence on the armed terrorist groups in Syria should guarantee the non-targeting of convoys transporting chemicals to Lattakia port.
Al Jaafari said: ‘The report of the OPCW Director General said that a large amount of chemicals have been moved out of Syria. Eleven shipments were transferred to Lattakia port and that about a half of the materials that will be destroyed outside Syria are now removed from the Syrian territories.’
He added that the transferring process is going well and the Syrian government has expressed its commitment to the deadlines. Al-Jaafari regretted that some of the 15 Security Council members had blocked a Russian proposal to issue a statement expressing ‘a serious warning by the council of the consequences of these terrorist attacks on the port of Lattakia while it is handling the shipments of chemical materials.’
He added: ‘The French policy is part of the crisis in Syria and not part of the solution. When France supports groups which are terrorists and not a national opposition at all, then it is involving itself in terrorism in Syria and shoulders this responsibility before the UN anti-terrorism committees.’
The goal of the terrorist groups’ attack on the Syrian coast, especially in Lattakia, al-Jaafari pointed out, is to create a disaster through blowing up dangerous materials and embarrassing the Syrian government with the aim of undermining cooperation between the government and the United Nations.
‘The terrorists want to create a disaster and endanger the lives of civilians and members of the OPCW-UN mission to try and make the UNSC adopt steps against the Syrian government.’
• Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has said that the scale of terrorism in Syria has taken a form that can no longer be covered up by the Westerners as they have done before. ‘Their excuses can’t be justified anymore,’ he added in a press conference in Moscow on Friday.
Lavrov stressed that terrorism must be combated without any conditions, recalling what the leaders of G8 group countries said a year before on the Syrian government and the ‘opposition’ having to unify their efforts to get rid of terrorists from Syria.
He made it clear that any linking of the holding of a Geneva 3 conference with the departure of President Bashar al-Assad from office is unacceptable.
The West has impeded a Russian draft statement at UNSC to condemn the Kassab terrorist attack
Western countries at the UN Security Council did not allow Russia to secure a condemnation of the terrorist attack on Kassab in Lattakia’s northern countryside and the shooting at the port of Lattakia by armed groups.
This shooting led to a suspension of the removal of chemical weapons from the country, Russia’s official delegation announced. The Russian-prepared draft statement for the Press condemned ‘the latest attacks by the terrorist groups, among them those connected to al-Qaeda, on the city of Kassab.’
The diplomat said: ‘The Western members of the UN Security Council blocked the adoption of a statement for the press which condemned the mortar shelling of the port of Lattakia. They have taken up an utterly unambiguous and common attitude on both humanitarian matters, political issues, and on chemical demilitarisation.
‘They seek to put an additional pressure on the government at every opportunity and take from under any pressure on those who are fighting against it, even if those are extremist and terrorist groups,’ Lavrov stated.
• A new Syrian commercial airline plans to start operating to several Arab cities next month, its chairman said on Thursday, despite the conflict raging in the country.
‘We hope to operate our first flights in mid-May,’ Kinda Airlines chairman Naim al-Jarrah said, adding that the exact timing of the launch hangs on international insurance issues and aircraft testing.
Founded three years ago, the Damascus-based Kinda Airlines received a licence in 2013 to fly from the capital and the Mediterranean port city of Latakia to several Arab countries. Jarrah said Aleppo and Qamishli airports, in the north and northeast, were currently up for expansion, ‘once they receive international insurance deemed necessary by passengers’amid the civil war that has ravaged much of Syria for more than three years.
So far, Kinda Airlines has obtained permits to fly to Baghdad, Amman and Kuwait City.
It is awaiting permission to fly to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Lebanon, Jarrah said. The company has a rented fleet of four Airbus 320s, including a standby emergency aircraft, from airlines in Jordan and the UAE.
It plans to start with domestic flights, and then operate to Arab cities, then east Asia and finally Europe, Jarrah said. Asked whether the company would be affected by Western sanctions imposed on Syria’s flag carrier after the government cracked down on dissent in 2011, Jarrah said the sanctions ‘do not affect private companies’.
He said that although Arab states have imposed sanctions of their own on Syria, ‘their sanctions do not target the official carrier’, which is still operating flights to several Gulf states, Egypt and Algeria.
Jarrah believes the airline is promising, because ‘the security around airports is promising, or else we would not have been able to rent the planes or obtain the permits from IATA and licensed international insurance companies.’
Kinda Airlines is starting off with a capital of $15 million – 60 per cent invested by Jarrah, and the remaining 40 per cent by other Syrian investors, none of whom are on international sanctions blacklists, he said.
