حمل سوريا على ان تقول ما تعنيه و ان تعني ما تقوله

(حول زيارة الأمين العام للأمم المتحدة الأخيرة إلى سوريا)

المحرر

دايلي ستار - 25/4/2007

Getting Damascus to say what it

 means and mean what it says

Wednesday, April 25, 2007

Editorial

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon arrived in Syria on Tuesday for high-level meetings on the international court to try suspects in the assassination of former Lebanese Premier Rafik Hariri, as well as other issues relating to Lebanon and the region. It is safe to guess that President Bashar Assad and other officials adopted the same tone during their talks with the UN chief that Syria has recently taken toward the UN investigation into the killing: one of the utmost compliance and cooperation. As an editorial in the state-run Tishrin newspaper suggested on Tuesday, Ban was probably given the impression that there is "a lot of common ground that can be built on."

But the international community ought to also take note of two key developments that were unfolding in Syria on the same day as the secretary general's visit. As Ban was arriving in Damascus , a Syrian court sentenced a leading human rights lawyer to five years in prison for questioning his government's policy toward Lebanon . Anwar al-Bunni's "crime" was to sign a petition calling for dialogue and diplomatic relations with the government in Beirut . Also on Tuesday, Syrian officials were counting votes and were due to announce the results of the country's recent parliamentary elections, not that the outcome of the vote was not predictable months in advance. Both the farcical elections and the jailing of a political dissident suggest that regardless of whatever President Bashar Assad tells Ban or any other visiting international official about his government's intentions, the primary concern of the ruling Baath Party is with engineering its own survival.

Although Assad was unlikely to have been completely forthcoming during Tuesday's meetings, Ban will no doubt come away from Damascus with a better idea about the nebulousness of the Syrian regime and the challenges that the international community faces in getting the country to modify its behavior toward Lebanon. This is not to say that the international community should give up its current quest to coax Syria 's cooperation and instead seek to further destabilize the country, as such an approach would undoubtedly have disastrous consequences. 

A better approach would be to seek ongoing contacts with Damascus aimed at dispelling any fantasy-like notions that the regime can bide time and wait for Lebanon 's sovereignty to go away. Diplomats might also begin themselves to separate the Syrian and Lebanese files, making clear to Syrian leaders that they must deal directly with the UN in upholding their obligations with regard to the Hariri tribunal, and that pulling strings in Lebanon will do nothing to absolve them of these responsibilities.

http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=1&article_id=81707&categ_id=17

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نشرنا لهذه المقالات لا يعني أنها تعبر عن وجهة نظر المركز كلياً أو جزئياً

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من حق الزائر الكريم أن ينقل وأن ينشر كل ما يعجبه من موقعنا . معزواً إلينا ، أو غير معزو .ـ