DUBLIN: The European Union was left divided over how to increase its help to the Syrian opposition on Saturday after talks between foreign ministers failed to bridge differences on whether to exempt the rebels from an EU arms embargo. Swedish foreign minister Carl Bildt, sceptical of a French and British drive to lift the arms ban on the rebels, said it was very difficult to detect any enthusiasm among EU foreign ministers meeting in Dublin “for further arming of a conflict that is already much too armed”.
After a two-year civil war that has killed 70,000 people, Paris and London say they want to raise pressure on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and try to force him to the negotiating table by allowing the supply of arms to the rebels. EU countries such as Germany, Austria and Sweden oppose the move, fearing it could lead to weapons falling into the hands of Islamist militants, fuel regional conflict and encourage Assad’s backers, Iran and Russia, to step up arms supplies to him.
Diplomats said France and Britain garnered little support at the two-day EU foreign ministers’ meeting that ended on Saturday, but discussions on how or whether to amend EU sanctions on Syria will continue among diplomats in Brussels over the next two months. Changing the arms ban, which must be renewed or amended by June 1, needs backing from all 27 EU states. Britain and France have said they could act alone if they do not get their way. In an apparent warning to Britain and France not to break with the rest of the EU, Bildt, an international mediator in the conflicts of the former Yugoslavia during the 1990s, said international divisions could prolong the Syrian war as it did the 1992-95 Bosnian war.
“Were you to have the different actors going off in different directions … then we would get a prolongation of the Syrian conflict as well,” Bildt said. Britain and France did find support from former Belgian prime minister Guy Verhofstadt who accused the foreign ministers of wasting an opportunity to stop Assad’s “killing machine”. (Reuters)