DAMASCUS, 26 September 2003 — The United Nations should play a “central role” in Iraq and “lead” multinational troops sent there, Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk Shara told UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, state media reported here yesterday. “Such troops should be led by the UN, otherwise the Iraqi people will see them as a means of consolidating the (US-led) occupation,” of Iraq, Shara told Annan during a meeting in New York on Wednesday, Syria’s official news agency SANA reported.
“It is vital that the UN has a central role covering all political, economic and security domains,” SANA quoted Shara as saying. Also present at the meeting were the nine other foreign ministers of the non-permanent members of the UN Security Council, SANA reported.
The Syrian minister said any new Security Council resolution on Iraq should “take into account Iraqi worries” that the occupation of Iraq will drag on. Damascus is “ready to cooperate with all members of the Security Council with respect to a resolution reassuring the Iraqi people of their fate,” he added.
To restore security to Iraq, “a series of steps” should be taken “to return liberty, independence and sovereignty to the Iraqis and to establish a timetable for the withdrawal of occupation forces,” SANA quoted Shara as saying.
Damascus has also asked for 15 Syrians from the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights be included in an exchange of prisoners between Israel and the Lebanese Hezbollah resistance group, officials said here yesterday.
The Committee for the Support of Syrian Detainees in the Occupied Golan Heights made the request by letter to the Follow-Up Committee for the Support of the Lebanese Detainees in the Israeli Prisons, the head of the Lebanese committee, Mohamad Safa, told AFP.
The letter includes the names of 15 Syrians from the Golan Heights, some who have been detained since 1985 and sentenced to up to 27 years in jail. The document does not mention the reasons for their detention or sentences. Israel seized the Golan Heights from Syria in the 1967 Arab-Israeli War and annexed them in 1981. The extent of their return is the main obstacle to a renewal of peace talks with Syria.
Meanwhile, a Lebanese prosecutor filed yesterday charges in Beirut against exiled Christian leader Michel Aoun over statements to a US congressional panel deemed damaging to Beirut’s ties with powerful neighbor Syria. Public prosecutor Joseph Maamari accused Aoun of “carrying out acts and plans without the permission of the government and which undermine Lebanon’s relations with a sisterly country.”
Aoun was also charged with “spreading lies abroad that harm the dignity and the capacity of the Lebanese state, incite sectarian strife, stir conflicts between confessions ... and impersonating public duties.”
Maamari referred the charges, accompanied by a recording of Aoun’s address to the congressional panel, to an examining magistrate, Judge Hatem Madi, for further investigation and interrogation of the exiled politician. If convicted, he could be sentenced to 15 years in prison, be stripped of his civil rights and banned from living in Lebanon. In remarks to the French-language daily L’Orient-Le Jour yesterday, Aoun said, “It is my natural right to express my opinion concerning the situation in my country.”
“This proves there is no freedom of opinion. There is no justice in Lebanon,” he said, adding: “I will continue my political action. This affair does not change anything.”
Last week, he testified before a US House of Representatives subcommittee studying the proposed Syria Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Restoration Act, which aims to make Damascus withdraw troops from Lebanon, halt support for alleged terror groups and give up weapons of mass destruction.
In another development, a group of 14 “democracy activists” are to appear before a military court for intending to participate in a banned conference on an emergency law in force since 1963, the Association of Human Rights in Syria said here yesterday. “These activists participated in a group discussion in (the northern town of) Aleppo where a conference on the emergency law was to take place,” said the statement.
“Although the conference had been cancelled, they were arrested in August for one day before being released and brought before a criminal court in accordance with emergency law,” it added. Among the 14 called to appear before the military court in Aleppo on Oct. 22 are members of banned parties and human rights organizations.
The trial is “a violation of the freedom of expression and the rights of association and taking part in public life,” the statement said. The association called for the “prohibition of such arbitrary practices with regard to civil activists in Syria and an end to character trials before exceptional courts,” such as state security courts.
On Aug. 22, police raided a political meeting hosted at the Al-Kawakby Forum, a public hall in Aleppo and arrested 22 activists participating in a lecture to mark the 40th anniversary of the declaration of emergency law in Syria. On Aug. 23, police released the 22 detainees after interrogating them all night.
The HRAS statement said the 14 people referred to the military court for the October 22 hearing belonged to the National Democratic Gathering, the Communist Labour Party and the Committees for the Defense of Human Rights.
