Syria: 3,500 tons of weapons already sent to rebels, says Lord Ashdown<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Telegraph<\/p>\n\n\n\n
1 JULY, 2013<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThey do not need arms. It is an unchallenged figure that 3,500 tons of arms have been shipped in by way of Croatia with the assistance of the CIA, funded by the Saudis, funded by the Qataris, going almost exclusively to the more jihadist groups,\u201d the former international high representative for Bosnia said in a debate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI know where those weapons are coming from. They are the weapons left over from the Bosnian war. They are being shipped out in large measure through Croatian ports and airports and I can tell you they are making vast sums for corrupt forces in the Balkans.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Lord Ashdown described the rebels as \u201cnot a fit and proper collection of people for us to be providing arms to\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Britain and France favour arming the rebels, while in a change of policy Washington recently announed it would supply direct miltiary aid to opponents of President Bashar al-Assad. Officials have said they would select \u201cmoderate rebels\u201d for assistance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He said Syria was the \u201cfront line in a wider conflict\u201d involving an attempt to build up a radicalised jihadist Sunni population to fight a war against the Shia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThis is about the preparations some are deliberately making to have a wider religious conflict,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He said there was a \u201creally serious diplomatic route\u201d to take to remove the \u201csteam\u201d out of the conflict.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIf it is the case that Saudi Arabia and Qatar are today funding the very jihadists against which we are fighting, why are we not using international pressure, the United States, the European Union, to persuade Saudi Arabia and Qatar to stop, to prevent this?\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt seems to me we should not stumble towards arms when there is diplomacy still to be played out.\u201d<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Syria: 3,500 tons of weapons already sent to rebels, says Lord Ashdown The Telegraph 1 JULY, 2013 \u201cThey do not need arms. It is an unchallenged figure that 3,500 tons of arms have been shipped in by way of Croatia with the assistance of the CIA, funded by the Saudis, funded by the Qataris, going […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2870,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6688","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-press-releases"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/odf-syria.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6688","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/odf-syria.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/odf-syria.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/odf-syria.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/odf-syria.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6688"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/odf-syria.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6688\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6703,"href":"https:\/\/odf-syria.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6688\/revisions\/6703"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/odf-syria.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2870"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/odf-syria.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/odf-syria.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6688"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/odf-syria.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}