Arming Syrian rebels could bring civil war, says Gilmore

MILITARY support for rebels in Syria could result in a deterioration in the conflict to all-out civil war, Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore has said.

Speaking from the Tunisian capital, Tunis, where an international conference to deal with the Syrian crisis was under way yesterday, Mr Gilmore said the first requirement was to agree a ceasefire.

This “would allow for some progress on the Arab League’s proposals to move things forward”, he said.

The general view of the meeting was to get a ceasefire of the violence, to get humanitarian aid delivered, and to have the Arab League work with opposition forces to get them to unite, the objective being to have a peaceful transition of power.

Mr Gilmore was one of more than 70 international delegates, including more than 60 foreign ministers, attending the conference, which is struggling to find a resolution to a conflict that has resulted in more than 8,000 deaths, with up to 70,000 people in detention and three million people needing humanitarian aid.

The Tánaiste stressed the significance of the conference. It was important the international community was not standing with its arms folded while the Assad regime attacked its population, he said. And “the fact there wasn’t a resolution appears to have emboldened Assad to trample” further on the population.

Calls for military support or intervention highlighted the fractured nature of the opposition.

Mr Gilmore said the danger with military support was a deterioration in the situation “and the last thing we need is full-scale civil war, first of all for the people of Syria and for the wider region, which is always sensitive”.

Highlighting the need for humanitarian aid, he said “the material and the money are there. The only problem is that the regime won’t allow the material to be delivered.”

The Labour leader hoped the appointment of former UN secretary general Kofi Annan as special envoy to Syria would be a means to bring the issue of the conflict back to the UN Security Council. Russia and China did not attend the conference, arguing it was skewed too much in favour of the opposition.

But the Tánaiste said: “I think both China and Russia will have to take into account the overwhelming view of the international community” that what was happening was unacceptable.

A number of EU foreign ministers attending the conference, including EU foreign chief Catherine Ashton, informally discussed next Monday’s meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels, at which the extension of sanctions, to include Syria’s central bank, will be discussed.