I would like to congratulate Mr. Ashe, the
President of the General Assembly, and his friendly
country, Antigua and Barbuda, on his election as
President at the sixty-eighth session of the General
Assembly. I wish him every success in conducting our
work through his major and neutral role as President of
the Assembly, like that of his predecessor, who avoided
engaging the presidency in special political agendas.
Last year when I addressed the Assembly (see
A/67/PV.19), we were compelled to address many
events that had ravaged our country and our world. We
were full of hope that the scene would change for the
better this year. Unfortunately, the situation remains
the same, and in some parts of the world has even
deteriorated. Many countries continue to face political,
economic and financial crises that exceed their ability
to tackle them on their own. While the international
community looked forward to effective international
efforts to overcome those crises, today we bear witness
to exacerbated and intensified problems.
That exacerbation is due to the hegemony and
dominion that thwart peoples’ capabilities. Such
domination has escalated in a way that blatantly
contradicts the principles of the Charter of the United
Nations and the norms of international law. Instead of
settling regional and international conflicts by peaceful
means, some well-known countries continue to pursue
aggressive policies against certain nations. Political
hypocrisy allows them to intervene in the domestic
affairs of States under the pretext of humanitarian
intervention or the responsibility to protect. When
such aggressive policies do not prove beneficial for
the countries subjected, including my own country,
Syria, those well-known States reveal their true beliefs
and threaten blatant military aggression outside the
mandates of the Security Council and certainly well
beyond any international consensus.
Those same countries impose immoral, illegal
and unilaterally coercive economic measures. In
addition, they maintain paranoid policies aimed at
spreading sedition and turmoil within pluralistic,
harmonious national communities that had previously
lived for hundreds of years in harmony, unity and
understanding. Worst of all, those countries have
launched major, destructive wars under the pretext of
combating terrorism, even as they support terrorism
in my country, in contravention of all United Nations
resolutions and all human and moral values.
I ask the same question I posed last year: Is the
international consensus on combating terrorism a
serious commitment undertaken by States Member of
the Organization, or is it mere rhetoric, written down
but not put into effect by certain countries?
What is happening in my country has become clear
to everyone. Yet some countries do not want to recognize
that Al-Qaida, the most dangerous terrorist organization
in the world, and its many offshoots — including Jabhat
Al-Nusra, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant,
the Islamic Brigade and many others — are fighting
in Syria. While scenes of murder, manslaughter and
even the eating of human hearts were seen on television
screens worldwide, that did not affect the conscience of
those who chose to turn a blind eye. In my country, the
heads of innocent civilians have been grilled because
they violated some extremist ideology and held views
that deviate from those of Al-Qaida. In my country,
murderers have dismembered human bodies while
the victims were still alive and sent their limbs to
their families because those citizens were defending a
unified and secular Syria.
In Syria — as in those countries that daily violate
basic human rights to life, livelihood and their own
religious beliefs and political affiliations — any Syrian
citizen who does not belong to that obscurantist takfiri
ideology is doomed to be killed or maimed or to
witness female relatives taken as captives on the basis
of perverted concepts of religion that have nothing to
do with Islam.
There is no civil war in Syria. It is a war against
terror, which does not recognize values, justice or
equality and disregards all human rights and laws.
Therefore, confronting terrorism in my country requires
the international community to act in accordance
with the relevant resolutions on counter-terrorism,
particularly Security Council resolution 1373 (2001).
It must take all necessary and immediate measures to
compel those countries that are known to finance, arm,
train and provide safe haven and passage to terrorists
from different countries to stop doing so.
The city of New York and its people have witnessed
the devastations of terrorism. They were burned by the
fires of extremists and suffered bloodshed, just as we
are suffering now in Syria. How can countries hit by
the same terrorism that we now suffer in Syria claim
to be fighting terrorism throughout the world while
supporting it in my country? Claims of the existence
of moderate militants and extremist militants have
become a bad and senseless joke. Terrorism means only
terrorism. It cannot be classified as moderate terrorism
and extremist terrorism. What should we call those
who kidnap children in order to sell their body organs
outside the country? How should we describe those
who recruit children and prevent them from going to
school and instead train them to shoot and kill? How
would one describe those who spread perverted fatwas
concerning sexual or incest-related jihad?
We were the ones targeted by poisonous gases in
Khan al-Assal. We asked for an investigative mission
and demanded that its mandate include the ability to
determine who had used chemical weapons. However,
the United States of America and its friends the United
Kingdom and France prevented that and insisted that
the mission be limited to deciding whether or not
chemical weapons had been used. In Syria, we waited
five months for the mission to come. When it arrived,
it was withdrawn before the completion of its task
as certain States had begun to beat the drums of war
against Syria.
My country has accepted the praiseworthy
initiative launched by Mr. Vladimir Putin, President of
the Russian Federation. By acceding to the Chemical
Weapons Convention, Syria has proved its commitment
against the use of such weapons. Syria also calls on the
international community to shoulder its responsibility
against the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction
in the Middle East. Syria is known for fulfilling its
obligations and commitments. Therefore, I assure the
Assembly of Syria’s commitment to fully implementing
the provisions of the Convention and to cooperating
with the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical
Weapons as a State party to the Convention.
One challenge that we all still face is not knowing
whether those who are supplying terrorists with such
weapons will abide by their legal commitments, since
the terrorists who used poisonous gas in my country
received chemical agents from countries of the region
and the West that are well known to all of us. They
are the ones using poisonous gas on our military and
innocent civilians alike.
Ending aggressive policies towards Syria is the first
appropriate step on the road to a solution in my country.
In the light of the continuing support being given to
terrorism, whether in the form of arms, funding or
training, any political solution will be misleading and a
mere illusion. Syria has repeatedly stated that it is open
to a political solution to its crisis. It is now up to those
who claim to support a political solution for Syria to
halt all practices and policies hostile to Syria and head
to Geneva without preconditions.
On the basis of their national right to self-
determination, the Syrian people have the
exclusive authority to choose their leadership, their
representatives, their future and a political system
that will accommodate every sector of Syrian society,
including those who have been deceived and beguiled
onto the wrong path. We in Syria place no bets on any
party but the Syrian people, all of whom are determined
to reject all foreign interference in their domestic affairs
and to defeat the advocates of sectarianism, extremism
and terrorism. In my country, State policies are firmly
tied to the aspirations of the people. Ballot boxes for
free and fair elections remain the only way for the
Syrian people to determine their own future, free from
the pressures of terrorism and foreign control.
There remain those who do not want a political
solution and always resort to aggression, either directly
or through their agents on the ground. That is what is
happening in Syria. As I mentioned, Syria is committed
to a political solution, but that does not mean allowing
terrorists to attack innocent civilians. It does not mean
watching our mosques and churches be destroyed, as
has happened in Homs and Aleppo and is happening
now in the town of Malula, the only place in the world
whose people still speak the language of Jesus Christ.
What is happening to the churches and mosques is also
affecting the entire historical and cultural heritage of
Syria and humankind.
Do those representing the Member States in
the Assembly know that terrorists from more than
83 countries are engaged in killing our people and our
army in the name of global takfiri jihad? Furthermore,
are some Member States entitled to demand that the
Syrian State ignore its constitutional responsibilities to
protect its citizens and preserve its unity, sovereignty
and independence? The war on terror is not only Syria’s
war. One day, those terrorists will return to their
countries, and then no country in the world will be
safe from that terrorism that recognizes no borders or
geography.
The events in Syria have created humanitarian
needs that continue to grow in several key sectors. The
immoral, inhumane and unilateral sanctions imposed
by the United States and the European Union have
worsened Syrian citizens’ living conditions at a time
when my Government is working with the United
Nations and international organizations within the
framework of a response plan to meet the basic needs
of citizens, particularly those who have been forced
to leave their homes. It should be noted that many of
our people have been forced to flee to neighbouring
countries in great numbers owing to the activities of
armed terrorist groups in border areas. Regrettably, in
some of those countries displaced Syrians have been
put in military training camps and places resembling
detention centres.
From this rostrum, I appeal to Syrian citizens to
return to their towns and villages, where the State will
guarantee their safe return and dignified livelihood,
far from the inhumane conditions in such camps. I
assure the Assembly of our readiness to make every
effort to deliver aid from international organizations
to all Syrian citizens without discrimination, wherever
they are, in compliance with resolution 46/182, while
respecting Syria’s sovereignty and independence.
The developments in my country should not make
us lose sight of Palestine and the Syrian Golan. The
Syrian Arab Republic affirms its natural right to full
sovereignty over the occupied Syrian Golan up to
the line of 4 June 1967, and emphasizes its rejection
of all measures taken by Israel, the occupying Power,
to change its natural demographic and geographic
features in clear violation of the relevant Security
Council resolutions, particularly resolution 497 (1981).
Syria also reaffirms its support for the legitimate and
inalienable rights of the Palestinian people, particularly
their rights of return and of self-determination, and
to establish an independent State on their land, with
Jerusalem as its capital.
Now that Syria has acceded to the Convention
on the Prohibition of the Development, Production,
Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and on
Their Destruction, my country renews its call on the
international community to work to establish a zone
free of weapons of mass destruction in the Middle
East. In that regard, we would remind the international
community of Syria’s initiative, taken at the end of its
non-permanent membership of the Security Council in
2003, and call on the Security Council to adopt it.
Syria stresses that establishing a zone free of
weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East will
be unachievable without the accession of Israel,
the only nuclear Power in the region, to all treaties
banning such weapons, and without its agreement to
put its nuclear facilities under the supervision of the
International Atomic Energy Agency. At the same time,
we emphasize the right of all countries to acquire and
develop nuclear technology for peaceful purposes, in
accordance with the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation
of Nuclear Weapons. In that regard, Syria condemns
the fact that the United States and Israel continue to
block the holding of the international conference on
establishing a zone free of weapons of mass destruction
in the Middle East that was scheduled to take place in
2012.
My country calls on the United States, the countries
of the European Union and others to refrain from taking
immoral unilateral economic measures that contravene
the rules of international law and the principles of free
trade. We therefore call for the lifting of the blockade
that has been imposed by the United States on Cuba for
decades. We also renew our call for lifting and ending
all unilateral coercive measures imposed on Syria and
the peoples of countries such as Venezuela, Belarus,
Iran and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
We hope that the United Nations will lead the
peoples of the world towards a better future, so that
they may achieve their aspirations for prosperity,
development and food self-sufficiency, free from all
forms of tension, confrontation and war, thus fulfilling
the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United
Nations, which upholds the sovereignty and equality
of all the rights and duties of all Member States. In
that regard, my country welcomes the efforts of the
United States and Iran to bridge the gap of mistrust
between the two countries, and hopes that this will be
reflected constructively and positively in the stability
of international relations.