DOHA: The Prime Minister and Foreign Minister H E Sheikh Hamad bin Jassem bin Jabor Al Thani said on Monday that what was going on in Syria was genocide being carried out by the regime with the complicity of the international community.
Taking exception to the UN-Arab League peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi’s statement made in Moscow earlier in the day that Syria was witnessing a civil war, the Premier said: “What is happening in Syria is not a civil war but a war of extermination against the people of Syria.”
In an interview with Aljazeera Arabic satellite channel late on Monday, the Prime Minister said what was needed from Brahimi was that the latter present clear ideas about how to resolve the crisis that has been brewing in Syria.
This war, which the Premier termed as a genocide being carried out by the Syrian regime, was being waged “with a licence to kill, endorsed firstly by the Syrian government and secondly by the international community”.
He was apparently referring to Russia and China, which have repeatedly vetoed UN Security Council resolutions threatening action against President Bashar Al Assad’s regime. “We have confidence in Mr Brahimi... but we need him to develop a clear proposal for a solution that can be put before the Security Council paving the way for a transition period and a transfer of power,” the Premier said.
Brahimi, who saw the truce he had brokered for the Eid holiday shattered in an explosion of violence soon after it took effect, said in Moscow that the situation in Syria was “bad and getting worse”. “If it’s not a civil war, I don’t know what it is,” he said after talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
Brahimi, who is also due to visit China, is to go to the UN Security Council in November with new proposals to push for talks between Assad and the opposition.
The Peninsula
