UN Report States Use of Chemical Weapons

CIVIL WAR// The revolt against the regime led by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad continued in September 2013 with world leaders gearing up to step into the civil war. Experts looking into the matter believe that several reasons led to the situation especially droughts, mismanagement of natural resources by President Assad, who subsidised water-intensive crops such as wheat and cotton farming and promoted bad irrigation techniques. The drought allegedly displaced 1.5mn people within Syria. Added to that, thousands of displaced immigrants travelled to Syria for safety after the Arab Springs. In this year allegedly 75 per cent of farmers suffered crop failure and moved to the cities. They all moved into urban areas that were already experiencing economic insecurity due to an influx of Iraqi and Palestinian refugees. As the civil war escalated, United Nations report on the usage of chemical weapons alarmed most of the developed nations of the world and talks were on to “disarm” Syria of its chemical weapons. Leaders in United States and Russia said they will try to revive an international peace process to end Syria’s civil war but only if they can reach agreement to disarm the Assad regime of chemical weapons. US secretary of state John Kerry described as “constructive” talks with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov in Geneva as the two countries seek agreement around disarming Syria of chemical weapons. United Nations envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, Kerry said the US and Russia were “working hard to find common ground” to resolve the wider civil war in Syria. “President Obama is deeply committed to a negotiated solution with respect to Syria, and we know that Russia is likewise,” the US’s most senior diplomat said at the UN headquarters in Geneva. The two foreign ministers agreed to meet on the fringes of a meeting of the United Nations general assembly at the end of the month to revive peace conference talks on Syria known as Geneva Two. Kerry and the foreign ministers of France and Britain also said they would not tolerate delays in dismantling Syria’s chemical weapons and would press ahead with a strong resolution in the United Nations Security Council to enforce the disarmament plan. “It is extremely important that there are no evasions,” William Hague, the British foreign secretary, said at a joint news conference.

Referring to President Bashar al-Assad, Kerry said, “If Assad fails in time to abide by the terms of this framework, make no mistake, we are all agreed—and that includes Russia—that there will be consequences.” A major question, however, is whether the United States and its allies are pursuing the short-term goal of dismantling Syria’s chemical arsenal at the expense of their ultimate objective of pressing Assad to relinquish power. The schedule for eliminating Syria’s chemical weapons is ambitious: all of them are to be eliminated by the middle of 2014. And experts say that meeting such a schedule will depend heavily on the cooperation of the Assad government.

Laurent Fabius, the French Foreign Minister, insisted that there was no contradiction between the disarmament goal and the longer-term diplomatic objective, because removing Assad’s chemical arsenal would undermine his military position and would eventually smooth the way for his ouster.

“It will be a weakening of his position,” Fabius said.