France Raises Issue of Arming Syrian Rebels
http://www.voanews.com/content/france-raises-issue-of-arming-syrian-rebels/1546525.html
France Raises Issue of Arming Syrian Rebels
VOA News
November 15, 2012
France says it will bring up excluding defensive weapons from the current arms embargo on Syria in order to help rebels fighting against the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. —->Continued
I want to point out a comment from this article’s comment section that I found worth highlighting:
by: Nikos Retsos from: Chicago, USA
November 15, 2012 8:18 AM
This issue -of arming the Syrian rebels- is certainly similar to the “Camel Putting her Head Under the Tent” in the Aesop fable. French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, a former French prime minister, is a skilled politician who is testing the waters carefully before France starts the flow of arms to the Syrian rebels. France, the former colonial power of Lebanon, still has interests in the region, and it wants to maintain a high profile without antagonizing other competing powers. Hence the feeler given out by Mr. Fabius in hope of a consensus agreement which would take into account the concerns of other global powers - as well as of regional influential states like Turkey and Egypt.
This is obviously an attempt by France to put a different spin in the Syrian civil war that up to now has been a proxy war between Assad and Iran on one side, and Saudi Arabia and Qatar as full supporters of the Syrian rebels on the other side. There is no doubt that the heavy involvement of Iran, Saudi Arabia and Qatar has turned the Syrian Arab Spring into a war between Sunnin Muslims and Shiites. France, therefore, has to tread carefully because democracy is not the only objective in Syria; there is a religious war among two Muslim sects there too, supported by Muslim states abhorent themselves to the idea of democracy.
Nikos Retsos, retired professor