The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #143239   Message #3361935
Posted By: Jim Carroll
11-Jun-12 - 05:53 AM
Thread Name: BS: Homs horror (Syria, 2012)
Subject: RE: BS: Homs horror (Syria, 2012)
"Are you ZIO-NATO on this issue Jim?"
Nope - are you now opposing your beloved leader.
You can now safely change your policy to supporting intervention without fear of being struck down by a thunderbolt from Downing Street
You really are a slimeball, aren't you?
Jim Carroll

WE CAN'T RULE OUT INTERVENTION, SAYS HAGUE, IN A SYRIA THAT LOOKS LIKE BOSNIA IN THE 90s.
Anthony Loyd Reyhanli, Turkey Sam Coates Deputy Political Editor

The bloodshed in Syria resembles that of Bosnia in the 1990s, William Hague said yesterday, invoking the memory of a conflict in which 12,000 British troops were sent to help to stop the killing.
The Foreign Secretary's comments came as a key Syrian rebel medical group on the border with Turkey told The Times that the West was failing to provide the promised aid to help the opposition movement. Meanwhile, the new head of Syria's main opposition group said that the regime was on its "last legs". Abdel Basset Sayda, a Kurdish activist, said: "The multiplying massacres and shellings show that it is struggling."
In the most recent episode, 20 people, mostly women and children, were killed in a bombardment of the city of Daraa over the weekend.
Mr Hague indicated yesterday that Britain would not rule out military action as the death toll from the conflict passed 14,000 in the 15-month conflictThe comparison with Bosnia is a significant moment, however, reminding the international community of the inaction that led to tens of thousands of deaths at the hands of Bosnian Serbs.
"Syria is... on the edge of a collapse or of a sectarian civil war so I don't think we can rule anything out," he said. "It is looking more like Bosnia in the 1990s, being on the edge of a sectarian conflict in which neighbouring villages are killing each other."
Within weeks of the conflict in Bosnia breaking out in 1992, thousands of refugees were herded into concentration camps where they suffered atrocities at the hands of Bosnian Serbs.
Despite full knowledge of the international community, it took three years including the massacre of 8,000 men and boys at Srebrenica before a brief bombing campaign in 1995 enforced a peace settlement that could have been achieved much earlier.
Mr Hague said that he "welcomed in principle" the Russian proposal for an international conference on Syria, but said that it must "not just buy time for the regime to kill more people". It would be hard to see how Iran could attend the conference, one of Russia's demands, as it had supported Syria.
The British Government had already provided £8.5 million towards helping alleviate the humanitarian situation, he said. However, a rebel doctor running the clandestine operation to smuggle supplies across the border from Turkey into Syria has questioned the scale of international commitment. He told The Times that all their medical supplies came from private sources not government. "Not a single country except France, who gave us a one-off do¬nation of €10,000, has given us any help at all," Omar al-Bunii said.
"These supplies are from private donors among Syria's expatriate community. There have been many promises of non-lethal aid. So far it has been just chat."
In the past month more than 500 wounded have been smuggled across the border for treatment in Turkey — 150 in the last ten days alone. Many die of their wounds long before they reach the border. "About 7 out of 10 deaths could be prevented if we had the right equipment," Dr al-Bunii added as his staff frantically distributed trauma kits to be rushed across the mountain to casualties of the latest atrocity at Maraat al-Numan, a town in northern Syria.
Ten months ago Dr al-Bunii and four other doctors established the Union of Free Syrian Doctors, to set up and supply a chain of secret field hospitals and clinics inside Syria. The organi¬sation, which now has logistics depots in Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan, has 100 doctors inside Syria and another . 300 doctors worldwide collecting supplies to ship to frontier areas, to be carried across by couriers at night.
Yet not even the Syrian National Council, the diverse political body representing the revolution whose new leader, Abdulbaset Sieda, was appointed yesterday, has managed to secure it funding. "They visited us and gave us words not pennies," Dr al-Bunii said.
Working in the group is risky. Of the original five founding members, four are now in Syrian jails, with 25 other doctors from the organisation found treating casualties opposed to the regime. The Army burns down the field hospitals and regularly kills couriers.