may 28, 2013 - UK and France win battle to lift EU’s Syria arms embargo
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https://www.ft.com/content/095e5e50-c6c1-11e2-8a36-00144feab7de
The UK and France have won the freedom to supply weapons to Syrian rebel groups after they succeeded in dismantling an EU arms embargo in spite of determined opposition from fellow member states.
The two nations prevailed at a meeting of EU foreign ministers that dragged on for more than 13 hours and laid bare deep divisions within the bloc about the merits of intervening more forcefully in a civil war that has claimed more than 80,000 lives.
William Hague, the British foreign secretary, said the decision sent “a very strong message” to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad about the need to seek a political solution to the conflict.
“While we have no immediate plans to send arms to Syria it gives us the flexibility to respond in the future if the situation continues to deteriorate,” Mr Hague said.
On Tuesday Russia said the EU’s failure to renew the arms embargo would undermine the chances for peace talks that Moscow and Washington are trying to organise.
“This does direct damage to the prospects for convening the international conference,” Russian news agency Itar-Tass quoted deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov as saying of the EU’s move.
The UK and France have been pressing other governments for months to lift the arms embargo in order to ratchet up pressure on Mr Assad to negotiate a settlement. That goal has become more urgent as the violence has intensified, prompting the US and Russia to seek to arrange international peace talks next month.
John McCain, the US Republican senator, made a brief visit to Syria on Monday for a meeting with rebel groups. Mr McCain has long called for the Obama administration to provide arms to some of the rebel groups. A Senate committee voted last week with a comfortable majority to support arming rebel groups.
However, Paris and London faced deep resistance to lifting the EU’s embargo from other EU member states – including Austria, the Czech Republic and Sweden – who fear that arming rebel groups will make the violence even worse and could see heavy weapons falling into the hands of terrorist groups.
“We are a peace community and we would like to stay as a peace community,” Michael Spindelegger, Austria’s foreign minister, said earlier on Monday. He later declared the talks had failed and expressed irritation at the UK’s stance.
Britain and France ultimately prevailed because – without unanimous agreement – a broader package of sanctions against the Syrian regime, including an oil embargo, would have expired at the end of the month.
In the run-up to the talks, Mr Hague suggested that he was willing to accept such an outcome in order to end the arms embargo. The eventual compromise was to allow the sanctions to collapse and then to reinstate all but the arms embargo.
Both Paris and London said they would not send any weapons to Syria imminently. The ministers agreed that any country that opted to do so would have to provide assurances about the types of weapons supplied and the recipients.
Earlier in the day, Laurent Fabius, France’s foreign minster, warned that there were increased signs of the use of chemical weapons in Syria, telling reporters there were “stronger and better substantiated indications of the local use of chemical arms. We have to check this and are doing this with our partners.”
Frans Timmermans, the Dutch foreign minister, said his country would not send weapons to Syria. Nonetheless, Mr Timmermans – who fought for a common EU position – expressed relief that the EU had managed to agree a deal that would keep the broader package of sanctions in place.
“Earlier today, we were risking not having any sanctions by the end of the day. So I’m counting my blessings,” he said.
Lady Ashton, the EU’s high representative, also defended the decision, saying: “Member states may take different decisions – that doesn’t mean we’ve lost the capacity to have a common foreign policy.”
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Syrian Civil War
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