Syria urges Israel to sign non-nuclear treaty
Walid al-Moallem, Syria's foreign minister, delivers UNGA address, noting his country supports Palestinians' right for state, urges int'l community to resolve Syrian crisis through diplomacy
Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem spoke before the UN General Assembly, noting that despite recent developments in his country, the Syrian people did not "lose sight of Palestine and the Syrian Golan.
"Syria reconfirms its support for the legitimate and inalienable rights of the Palestinian people, in particular their right of return and self-determination, and to establish their independent state on their land, with Jerusalem as its capital," the Syrian minister asserted.
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He added that "The Syrian Arab Republic confirms its natural right to fully restore the occupied Syrian Golan up to the line of June 4th, 1967, and emphasizes its rejection of all measures taken by Israel, the occupying power, to change its natural, demographic and geographic features in a clear violation of the relevant Security Council resolutions."
"At the same time," he noted, "we emphasize on the right of all countries to acquire and develop nuclear technology for peaceful purposes in accordance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
"Syria condemns the continued blocking by the United States and Israel of holding the International Conference on the Establishment of a Zone Free of Weapons of Mass Destruction in the Middle East, which was scheduled to take place in 2012."
Syria: We are fighting al-Qaeda (Photo: AP)
The Syrian foreign minister expressed discontent with the international community's handling of the Syrian crisis, casting blame at countries that fight terrorism in their lands, but "at the same time… supporting terrorism in my country, in contradiction of all United Nations' resolutions and all human and moral values."
He blamed "al-Qaeda, the most dangerous terrorist organization in the world, and its many offshoots, like Jabhat al-Nusra, the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, the Brigade of Islam and many others," for murder, saying that people were slaughtered "just because they violate the extremist ideology and deviant views of al-Qaeda.
"In my country, those terrorists violate, on daily basis, human rights, citizens' rights (...on the basis of) the citizens' religious beliefs and political affiliations."
He stressed that "There is no civil war in Syria, but it is a war against terror that recognizes no values, nor justice, nor equality, and disregards any rights or laws. Confronting this terror in my country requires the international community to act in accordance with relevant resolutions on counter-terrorism… and to take necessary and prompt measures to compel those well-known countries that finance, arm, train and provide a safe haven and passage for terrorists coming from different countries of the world," to stop doing so.
He insisted that Syria was committed "to the full implementation of the provisions of the Convention," willing "to cooperate with the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) as a state party to the Convention.
He urged the international community to resolve the crisis in his country via diplomacy, and to "stop all unilateral coercive measures imposed on Syria and the peoples of other countries, such as Venezuela, Belarus, Iran and the Democratic Peoples' Republic of Korea."
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