Tunis conference: No friends of the Syrian people
At the present Friday, representatives of several western and Arabian States known as the Friends of Syria group meet in Tunis, among them German foreign minister Guido Westerwelle. To this, member of the executive board of DIE LINKE, Christine Buchholz, declares:
In Tunis meet no friends of Syria. It is a gathering of the foreign ministers of western states with those of the Gulf States, which never cared about the Syrian people. The Federal Republic of Germany under the Schroder and Merkel government approached president Assad as well. Cooperation went to the point, that members of the BKA (the Federal Criminal Police Office) questioned Mohammed Haydar Zammar, a "terror suspect" with German citizenship, in Syrian prisons in 2002.
The revolutionary movement in Syria opposed in large parts to western intervention. With good reason. The Syrian people can only free itself. Because of that DIE LINKE rejects the suggestion of the Arab League, to send UN peacekeeping troops to Syria. We also reject any economic sanctions affecting the Syrian people.
The brutal oppression by Assad’s troops now gives impetus to those Syrian oppositionists, who make advances to the West. In Tunis, the Syrian National Council (SNC) shall now be diplomatically upgraded. By this maneuver western governments try to gain back the grounds they lost after the fall of the allied dictators Ben Ali and Mubarak. The wheeling and dealing between SNC and western governments does not represent the Syrian people. The Syrian movement can only be successful without external intervention.