Moallem: Halting Aggression against Syria ’Prerequisite’ for Political Solution

The Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem said Monday that the cessation of the aggressive policies against Syria is a prerequisite for any political solution.

"Any talk of a political solution while the arming, funding and training of terrorism is mere illusion and misleading," he told the General Assembly of the United Nations.

"The Syrian government is fighting against terrorist groups from 83 countries as part of its constitutional right to protect the country’s people."

“Confronting this terror in my country requires the international community to act in accordance with relevant resolutions on countering terrorism, particularly the UNSC resolution No. 1373 of 2001,” he added.

Moallem dismissed the definition of the Syrian conflict as a civil war, saying that the Syrian government is engaged in a “war against terrorism that recognizes no values, nor justice, nor equality, and disregards any rights or laws.”

“We are the ones who were targeted by poisonous gases in Khan Al-Assal, near Aleppo,” Moallem asserted, saying that Syria asked the UN inspectors to include in its mandate the ability to determine who used chemical weapons, but that it was omitted due to pressure from the US, the UK and France. 

He added that Syria was committed to fully implement the provisions of the Chemical Weapons Convention and cooperate closely with the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).

Syria’s top diplomat went on to question whether those countries “supplying terrorists” with weapons would “abide by their legal commitments,” saying there “remains the challenge” that they would not do so.

Moallem then accused “regional and Western countries that are well known to all of us” of supplying chemical agents to “terrorists who used poisonous gases” in Syria.

Syria calls for “necessary and prompt measures to compel those well-known countries that finance, arm, train and provide a safe haven and passage for terrorists coming from different countries of the world,” Moallem said.

Tackling Geneva II conference, Moallem said that Syria has repeatedly announced that she embraces a political solution of its crisis, adding  that now it is time for “those who claim to support” such a solution “to stop all hostile practices and policies against Syria, and to head to Geneva without preconditions.”

At the same time, Moallem called on the United States, as well as European and other countries, “to refrain from adopting immoral, unilateral economic measures that contradict the rules of international law and the principles of free trade.”

Syria FM called on the US to stop “all unilateral coercive measures” imposed on Syria, Venezuela, Belarus, Iran and North Korea, as well to lift the economic blockade of Cuba.