Britain’s parliament will vote on whether to start sending arms to the Syrian opposition, the UK Foreign Secretary William Hague has said. He also expressed his concerns that government forces are “gaining ground” in Syria, ‘undermining’ negotiations.
No decision on sending arms to Syrian rebels had yet been taken,
Hague assured on Sunday in an interview to the BBC.
“There would be a vote one way or the other,” the British
foreign secretary added, admitting that not everyone supports
such a move in the country. Some people have “understandable
concerns,” he said.
However, Hague himself apparently advocated the rebels’ “right
to defend themselves,” saying the world “denies” them
such a “right.”
Despite Britain had lobbied vigorously to lift the EU embargo on
arms shipments to Syria side by side with France, the UK
government now appears to be split on the issue. Some ministers
fear that sending arms to rebels would not only worsen the
bloodshed in Syria, but also drag Britain into the conflict.
Hague also remained skeptical of the two conflicting sides coming
together at a Geneva peace conference, and blamed the recent
gains of Syrian President Bashar Assad’s forces for making
negotiations even less possible.
“The regime has gained ground. That makes the Geneva
conference harder to bring about and to make a success. It makes
it less likely that the regime will make enough concessions in
such negotiations, and it makes it harder to get the opposition
to come to the negotiations,” Hague argued.
The UK Foreign Secretary was apparently referring to the retaking
of the strategic western Syrian town of Qusair on the border with
Lebanon, which is believed to have cut an important supply route
for the rebels.
Russia has blasted the EU’s move to lift the Syrian arms embargo
as “an unlawful” decision and “an example of double
standards.”
“This is an unlawful decision, in principle, to discuss
seriously on official level the issue of supplying or not
supplying arms to non-state actors is contrary to all norms of
international law,” the Russian Foreign Minister Sergey
Lavrov said, citing the Global Arms Trade Treaty, which allows
supplying arms to governments only.
Meanwhile, a report by the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human
Rights said the rebels shot down a 15-year-old child in front of
his parents for what they considered a “blasphemy.”
“An unidentified rebel group shot dead a 15-year-old child who
worked as a coffee seller in Aleppo, after they accused him of
blasphemy,” the Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman said
as quoted by Al Jazeera.
“They shot the boy twice, once in the mouth, another in his
neck, in front of his mother, his father and his siblings,”
Abdel Rahman said, detailing the atrocity.
The rights activist blamed foreign jihadists of the
“criminal” deed, citing reports that the offenders spoke
“classical Arabic.” He condemned the shooting, saying it
is the kind of criminality that “makes people in Syria fear the
fall of the regime.”
This article originally appeared on: RT