Negotiate with Syria
I should like to draw
attention to my post of 11 March 2012 (Assad and Syria); it does not seem to have been overtaken by events, and is
today (24th November 2015) as relevant as ever.
Last year (23 Nov 2014) I wrote an open
letter to Assad (shown below) which still seems to me a workable approach to
negotiations between the current Syrian government and the UN or NATO, or
whoever thinks they should be consulted concerning the internal affairs of
Syria.
Dear President Bashar Al Assad,
If I were a member of your negotiating team
I would be inclined to argue:
[1] The Assad regime is still the legal
(and de facto) government of Syria;
[2] It subscribes to the UN charter, and
believes that the charter explicitly limits the interference by other countries
in Syrian internal affairs;
[3] Syria has conceded that chemical
weapons are very widely abhorred and that those have been voluntarily eschewed
by your government;
[4] You warn against the view that the
democratic form of government, evolved over the last 300 years in certain
Atlantic countries, is necessarily successful in other countries;
[5] You could point out that the legal
‘right’ of Cromwell to kill King Charles I, or of the USA to usurp the
governance of Hawaii, rested on the power of arms, and was in no way democratic;
[6] You would like the United Nations
to accept the legitimacy of your regime "as being the government most
favoured among the alternatives by the people of Syria";
[7] You would like the support of the
UN in preventing arms trafficking and the infiltration of insurgents across
Syrian borders;
[8] To obtain this co-operation you
concede that an internationally supervised plebiscite be held to obtain the
views of legitimate Syrian nationals to confirm (or negate) the legitimacy of
the Al Assad government.
Yours sincerely, Ian West
BANBURY, OX17 2NB,
