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Kofi Annan: Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey supplied Syrian opposition with money and arms
10 March 2014
(EIRNS)—In an interview with the Austrian Die Presse newspaper today, Kofi Annan, former UN Secretary-General and former international envoy to Syria, said Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey have supplied the Syrian opposition with money and arms. He also stressed that Iran must be part of the solution in Syria, given its great capabilities that allow it to exert an influence in the region and play an objective role to end the crisis, pointing out that Saudi Arabia opposed any Iranian role, as it views Tehran as a rival in the regional and international arena. Although Annan refrained from exposing the role of the West, and the Obama administration in particular, in backing the terrorist operations to unseat Bashar al-Assad, he nonetheless pointed out in the interview that, during his tenure as the international envoy to Syria, he had told everyone that there could not be a military solution to the conflict in Syria, adding that no full agreement on his proposals was reached at the UN Security Council, and "that was why I had to quit my mission as an international envoy to Syria." Annan’s efforts at the time were supported by both Russia and China, but were torpedoed by Britain, France, and the United States. Kofi Annan was in Tehran with former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari, Nobel Peace laureate Desmond Tutu, and Mexico’s former President Ernesto Zedillo last month as part of "The Elders," a group convened by the late Nelson Mandela. They met Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and discussed the Syrian crisis. [Ramtanu Maitra] |