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Ja'afari: the US administration, EU continue economic terrorism against Syria through imposing unilateral, coercive measures

Tuesday, 27 October 2020
Presenter: 
Dr. Bashar Ja'afari
Location: 
The Security Council

 

 

Mr. President,

My Delegation would like to thank you for your successful stewardship of the work of the Security Council this month and for your country's stances that are based on the principles of international law and the provisions of the United Nations Charter.

Mr. President,

The events in the Middle East and the Mediterranean regions prove, day after day, the validity of what we have been confirming over the past nine years. We have repeatedly drawn the Council’s attention to the fact that some member state governments exert feverish efforts to destabilize the security and stability of our countries, in order to serve their narrow selfish interests as well as aggressive and intrusive agendas. These events also demonstrated once again what we have alerted to regarding the lack of wisdom among decision-makers in some Western capitals, including those of the three permanent Western member states of this Council.  In order to achieve their agendas, these decision-makers are ready to sell their souls to the devil and to personally supervise infamous investigation mechanisms and committees at the expense of the security and stability of my country and the blood and well-being of its people, and at the expense of the United Nations Charter, its credibility and role.

We have repeatedly drawn the Council’s attention to the danger of deploying terrorism, its entities and criminals, regardless of the masks it hides behind, and the need to not tolerate its sponsors and investors. We were speaking in good faith for the benefit of all humanity, yet Western states turned a deaf ear to our warnings.

Today we can all see, unfortunately, the effects of those clumsy Western policies, where the monster turned against its creators. Erdogan’s terrorism -sponsoring regime, is no longer content with performing the tasks assigned to it - namely, promoting Islamist movements-not Islamic as deceivers always claim- sponsoring these movements in many countries in the region, and limitlessly supporting terrorist organizations and transnational terrorists who infiltrated into my country through our northern borders.  Rather, Erdogan saw in himself a new Ottoman sultan whose armies and mercenaries could invade neighboring countries in the Middle East and Europe without any legal or moral deterrent, as if time stopped at the years preceding the era of the League of Nations, Charter of the United Nations and the repertoire of a hundred years of international legal treaties, instruments and moral values.

Erdogan's regime has expanded its military interventions, serious crimes, and support for terrorism beyond the borders of my country to many countries in our region and its neighborhood. This includes Iraq, Libya, Egypt, Tunisia, Somalia, Greece, Cyprus, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and others, and may think of ways to come through the doors of Vienna again. These are serious threats to international peace and security and could never have happened without the protection provided by the member states of NATO to their Turkish ally, similar to their patronage and immunity they granted to the Israeli occupation over the past seven decades.

Mr. President,

We have repeatedly called on this Council to hold the Erdogan regime accountable for its violations of international law, the provisions of the United Nations Charter, Security Council resolutions and its treaty obligations, and for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed against my country, which it started with the violation of the Adana Security Agreement concluded between the two countries in 1998. Erdogan’s regime should be held accountable for recruiting, supporting, training and arming thousands of local and cross-border terrorists who were brought by this regime and its allies from more than a hundred countries, according to the reports of the United Nations and your Council's specialized committees, and provided them with political, military and media support.  Then, Erdogan’s regime started integrating these terrorists into his forces, launching acts of aggression and occupying large parts of the north of my country, stealing and plundering wealth and natural resources of the Syrian people, including antiquities, oil and gas, factories, machinery and agricultural crops. It is also instigating forced displacement, demographic change, and imposing Turkification, and using drinking water as a weapon against civilians. Furthermore, this regime along with its affiliated terrorist groups have intentionally set fire to large areas of land cultivated with wheat, barley, olive trees, and citrus fruits and depriving their owners of their only source of livelihood.

We regret that the Security Council did not show solidarity, at least, with the Syrians who have been affected by the arson attacks that have recently occurred in large areas of several governorates in my country. Of course, Western states would have filled the corridors of the United Nations with cries and called for holding urgent meetings if those fires had erupted in the areas controlled by the terrorist organization "Hayat Tahrir al-Sham / Jabhat al-Nusra" or areas of the American or Turkish occupation.

In addition to the aforementioned crimes of the Turkish regime, that regime has disavowed its obligations and commitments according to the outcomes of the Astana meetings and the Sochi understandings regarding Idlib region, and has built the so-called separation wall on parts of the territory of the Syrian Arab Republic and manipulated the sites of the stones marking our common temporary borders. Moreover, it tried to exploit The refugee issue to blackmail Europe and conclude transactional deals with it, in addition to transferring foreign terrorists and mercenaries, whom some call the "moderate armed opposition", from Syria to Libya, while this regime is currently trying to rob the energy sources in the Mediterranean.

My delegation reiterates that the crimes of the Turkish occupation will not in any way change the legal reality of the lands it occupies and their being an integral part of the Syrian Arab Republic, nor will it lead in any way to prejudice the legal and sovereign rights of the Syrian Arab Republic or represent a precursor to any future bilateral demarcation of borders.

Mr. president,

The American Administration and its partners in the European Union continue the policies of economic terrorism and collective punishment of peoples through the unilateral coercive measures that they impose on my country. These measures aim to suffocate civilians and deprive them of food, medicine, basic medical equipment and fuel, and to prevent reconstruction and the return of the displaced, in great disregard for international law and the charter of our organization, and the calls made by the Secretary-General and senior officials of the United Nations and Human Rights Council about the need to lift these measures, especially in light of the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic and the need to respond to it.

Mr. President,

I would like to inform you of the Syrian Government's decision to hold an international conference on refugees, in Damascus on November 11 and 12, the participation in which will be available, whether in-person or virtually, by representatives of the Member States and the United Nations and its specialized agencies. The conference aims to follow up the call made by my Government in 2017 for the return of Syrian refugees and displaced persons, and our request at that time from the international community and the United Nations to support the return process, create the appropriate environment and provide basic services to the returnees; a call that the Governments of some countries sought to obstruct by placing a veto on reconstruction and imposing unfair politicized conditions on humanitarian and developmental work in my country.

We look forward to the participation of the countries that believe and uphold in international law and the provisions of the Charter in this conference and their support for the efforts of the Syrian State and its allies to improve the humanitarian situation and livelihood and provide support to facilitate the dignified and safe return of Syrians to their homeland, villages and homes.

Mr. President,

        My Country renews its demand to end the illegal presence of the US occupation forces in my country and to stop the support it provides to its tools of terrorists, separatist militias, and illegal artificial entities, and their prescribed theft of Syrian oil, gas, agricultural crops and related crimes aimed at depriving the Syrian state of its basic resources, therefore, prolonging the suffering of the Syrians and obstructing the political solution.

Mr. president,

The Syrian government has always engaged in the political process. We have participated openly in talks in Geneva, consultations in Moscow, and meetings in Astana. We have upheld the outcomes of the Syrian National Dialogue Congress in Sochi, including the formation of a committee to discuss the constitution. We have had serious and constructive conversations with the Special Envoy for Syria, in the leadup to the formation and convening of the Constitutional Committee in Geneva. We hope that the committee will succeed.

Success, however, is only possible if there is no external interference whatsoever in its work and by any party. Since the start, the committee has been independent. It is up to the committee to decide its methods of work and its recommendations. The whole process from beginning to end must be exclusively Syrian-led and Syrian-owned. Syrians have the sole right of determining the future of their country.

        Two days ago, the special envoy, Mr. Geir Pederson, visited Damascus, where he held meetings with H. E. the Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates, and the co-chair of the national side in the work of the Constitutional Committee.

While Mr. Pedersen spoke about his impressions of these meetings, I would like to emphasize that the Syrian side stresses the importance of the success of the committee’s work, which requires respecting the rules of its procedures that have been agreed upon, including not allowing any external interference or pressures to impede its work. In addition, some countries' attempts to set unacceptable timetables will not serve the responsible work of this committee, which relates to the present and future of Syria.

We reiterate to those who do not want the work of this committee to advance that the committee is its own master, and it is the one that adopts the proposals that it arrives at through a discussion that reflects the will of the Syrians, and the Syrians alone, and we do not see an alternative to the deliberations of the Constitutional Committee in all its stages under Syrian leadership and ownership, because the Syrian people are the only ones concerned with determining the future of their country.

Mr. President,

The more I listen to my Western colleagues in these sessions, the more I become convinced that the amount of absurdity in their speech, the amount of hypocrisy in their reading and the confusion in their countries' wrong policies towards my country, all this deems it necessary to add the psychiatrist Freud to the list of briefers, perhaps  this could help us diagnose the state of schizophrenia in language and  unreality in political analysis.

We said it over and over, the opponent could never be a judge, and the arsonist could never claim to be a firefighter. The last thing one can think of, after the victory over the crime of apartheid in South Africa, is offending the great patriotic leader Nelson Mandela by employing his moral integrity to serve an immoral and illegal issue such as starving peoples and preventing them from food and medicine, development and reconstruction .

Thank you, Mr. President.