Friday 3rd of May 2024
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blessed be the peacemakers .....

blessed be the peacemakers .....

Foreign Minister Bob Carr is not ruling out expelling the Syrian ambassador as part of Australia's response to ongoing violence in the Middle East nation.

In the meantime, Australia will contribute $5 million to meet humanitarian needs in Syria and neighbouring countries.

European envoys say that Syria has failed to comply with UN special envoy Kofi Annan's peace plan and that international measures must be studied.

Senator Carr said he was "not ruling out" expelling Syria's ambassador as a symbolic gesture, but emphasised any responses would be measured.

"Certainly at this stage we would like to keep alive the hope that the government of Syria will shift its position," Senator Carr told ABC Television from New York on Wednesday.

Australia also is considering ramping up sanctions against Syrian government officials.

"We're prepared to discuss that further with our partners," the foreign minister said, adding travel and financial restrictions were in place against 106 individuals and 28 entities.

The sanctions did not hurt "the suffering people".

Australia also supported efforts to collect evidence about serious war crimes in Syria.

Senator Carr, who is in New York for meetings at the UN, says it is imperative the Syrian regime follows Mr Annan's ceasefire plan.

Australia's aid package includes $3 million to the World Food Program and $2 million for immediate humanitarian assistance through the UN office for Coordination of Humanitarian affairs.

"The money will help people displaced from their homes, who are traumatised by the experience of civil war," Senator Carr said.

Carr Won't Rule Out Syrian Envoy Expulsion

I wonder when the awstraylen government will consider making a similar 'symbolic gesture' by expelling Israel's ambassador in protest at the Israeli government's ongoing war crimes committed against the Palestinian people & its ongoing refusal to abide by UN resolutions?

Gillard, Carr & our awful awstraylen governments of all persuasions are posturing hypocrites, dancing to Washington's tune .... day-in, day-out!!

tut, tut .....

This massacre of civilians in Haoula is a hideous & brutal crime’ thundered Senator Bob Carr, as he announced the Australian government’s decision to expel two Syrian diplomats today (‘Carr expels diplomats’, Sydney Morning Herald, May 29).

Whilst the carnage being wrought by all sides in Syria is horrible, we shouldn’t forget that it hardly rates compared to the decades long American slaughter of tens of thousands of innocent civilians in Iraq, Afghanistan & Pakistan.

 

That the everyday butchery of innocent men, women & children by the latest weapon of choice from democracy’s arsenal, the aptly named drone, is conducted in deathly diplomatic silence, is surely evidence enough of the heroic cowardice & cynicism that is the hallmark of our fearlessly hypocritical warrior politicians

yes john... it's orchestrated from the US...

Western Nations, Protesting Killings, Expel Syrian Envoys


By


BEIRUT, Lebanon — Western nations expelled senior Syrian diplomats on Tuesday in a hardened and coordinated condemnation of the weekend massacre of more than 100 villagers in Syria, nearly half of them children.

The response by the United States and others came as the top United Nations peacekeeping official gave new credence to suspicions that pro-government Syrian thugs, known as shabiha, were at least partly responsible for the killings, despite official Syrian denials of complicity.

Outrage over the killings, which constituted one of the gravest atrocities in the 15-month-old uprising against President Bashar al-Assad, coincided with a visit to Syria by the United Nations special envoy, Kofi Annan, who met with Mr. Assad in Damascus to salvage a failing cease-fire.

Mr. Annan, speaking to reporters later, said he had warned Mr. Assad time is running out.

"We are at a tipping point," he said at a news conference in Damascus. "The Syrian people do not want the future to be one of bloodshed and division. Yet the killings continue and the abuses are still with us today. As I reminded the President, the international community will soon be reviewing the situation. I appealed to him for bold steps now — not tomorrow, now — to create momentum for the implementation of the plan."

As Mr. Annan was speaking, the United Nations undersecretary for peacekeeping operations, Hervé Ladsous, told reporters at U.N. headquarters in New York that victims of the massacre who had died from small weapons and knife wounds "probably points the way to the shabiha." While he did not rule out other perpetrators, Mr. Ladsous said, "the suspicion is definitely there."

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/30/world/middleeast/kofi-annan-meets-with-bashar-al-assad.html?_r=1&hp&pagewanted=print   

"Time is running out" and "the suspicion is definitely there" mean squat... The massacre could have been the work of "agents provocators" from Al Qaeda who, like the West, want Assad to fold at the knees. But who knows... 

death by stealth .....

obama’s drone war doctrine: kill, kill & kill some more …..

 

Antony Loewenstein