Assad’s game-changer

UN gives Syrian regime the go-ahead for chemical attacks

By Brian Whitaker

"At an emergency meeting last night the UN Security Council in effect gave the Syrian regime a green light for chemical attacks on its citizens.

The council issued a feeble call for “clarity” in response to the deaths of hundreds of people near Damascus yesterday – deaths that appear to have been caused by some kind of toxic gas.

Most importantly, the statement did not specifically demand a UN investigation, even though UN weapons inspectors are currently in Damascus to investigate earlier reports of chemical weapons use. Reuters adds:

“An earlier western-drafted statement submitted to the council, seen by Reuters, was not approved. The final version of the statement was watered down to accommodate objections from Russia and China, diplomats said. Moscow and Beijing have vetoed previous Western efforts to impose UN penalties on Assad.”.....

Thus Obama may actually be quite relieved that the UN isn’t pressing harder to discover the truth about yesterday’s events in Syria. So long as the charges against Assad to remain unproven, Obama can avoid difficult decisions over how to respond while blaming Russia and China for their obstruction in the Security Council.

But this has implications which go far beyond Syria. It’s worth noting that number of the deaths in Damascus yesterday (apparently running into the hundreds) may turn out to be smaller than the number of recent deaths in Egypt as a result of the military takeover there – though in Egypt people were killed mainly by guns.

Does this make a difference? For a long time, the international consensus has been that it does. Chemicals, along with nuclear and biological weapons, are treated as a special class of weaponry that needs to be controlled.

If Assad is allowed to use chemical weapons in Syria with impunity it will be a major step on the slope towards normalising them."