![](\"https:\/\/cdn.rt.com\/files\/2016.09\/thumbnail\/57d0257dc46188a9668b45d9.jpg\")
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Britain has spent more than \u00a31 million ($1.4 million) funding the Syrian opposition\u2019s lobbying efforts in Washington DC and at the United Nations in a bid to influence American policy, US Department of Justice records reveal.<\/p>\n
The British government has used a fund known as the Conflict, Stability and Security Fund to bankroll lobbyists in the US \u2013 some of whom are former British diplomats \u2013 on behalf of Syrian rebels.<\/p>\n
The revelation comes as Syrian opposition leaders meet in London on Wednesday to discuss a possible peace deal which would see President Bashar Assad step down.<\/p>\n
British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson hinted on Wednesday the UK is prepared to give stronger backing to \u2018moderate\u2019 Syrian rebels opposing Assad.<\/p>\n
Lobbying documents obtained by Al-Monitor show the UK has been using \u2018soft power\u2019 to influence US policy on Syria for years.<\/p>\n
The Conflict Pool was created in 2009 to \u201creduce the impact of conflict and instability around the world,\u201d<\/em> according to the British government.<\/p>\n The fund, which is jointly managed by the Ministry of Defence (MoD), the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) and the Department for International Development (DfID), was renamed to become the Conflict, Stability and Security Fund in April 2015.<\/p>\n In the last 18 months, it paid out $1.4 million to advisory group Independent Diplomat to lobby the US State Department on behalfof the National Coalition of Syrian Revolution and Opposition Forces.<\/p>\n At least two of the lobbyists are former British diplomats \u2013 Independent Diplomat founder and Executive Director Carne Ross and Policy Director Reza Afshar are both registered on the account.<\/p>\n The fund came to national attention earlier this year for spending \u00a32.4 million ($3.2 million) to run a shadow press office for the Western-backed Syrian opposition aimed at publicising \u2018moderate\u2019 rebels to military backers such as the Department of Defence.<\/p>\n A Foreign Office spokesperson told Al-Monitor: \u201cThe UK has spent over \u00a35 million ($6.5 million) since the start of the conflict supporting the Syrian opposition. This includes providing negotiation and communication support along with advice and training to staff at their international offices<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n Separately, records show that Saudi Arabia has used its $8 million contract with international PR giant MSLGroup to help the Syrian opposition with \u201cmedia support<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n The PR firm has helped promote opposition forces through outlets such as Fox News, Reuters and the New York Times, according to Al-Monitor.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Via RT<\/a>. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News<\/a> with permission or license.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Britain has spent more than \u00a31 million ($1.4 million) funding the Syrian opposition\u2019s lobbying efforts in Washington DC and at the United Nations in a bid to influence American policy, US Department of Justice records reveal. The British government has used a fund known as the Conflict, Stability and Security Fund to bankroll lobbyists in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":266225,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519,18],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-266224","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-newswire","8":"category-latest-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266224","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=266224"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266224\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/266225"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=266224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=266224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=266224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}