UNSC Poised to Criticize Syria (Again)
By David Schenker
Less than a week after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s counterproductive visit to Damascus, the UN is weighing in with its own assessment of Syrian policy. Press reports on April 9 indicated that France had circulated a draft UN Security Council statement expressing concern over the transfer of illegal arms from Syria to Lebanon. This Syrian transfer of weapons is rearming Hizballah in violation of UNSCR 1701.
This is not the first time that the UN has criticized the Syrian arms transfers to Hizballah after last summer’s disastrous war. In November 2006, Terje Roed-Larson the top UN diplomat on Lebanese-Syria affairs—who is not known for his favorable bias toward Israel—noted that the Syrians were rearming Hizballah.
During the war, it was revealed that Syria was not only serving as a transit point for Iranian weapons going to Hizballah, but was also providing Hizballah with its own top of the line cutting edge weapons—such as the Kornet anti-tank missile and 220 mm anti-personnel rockets—to the Lebanese terrorist organization. Many reports refer to this activity as “smuggling,” but Syria, a tightly controlled dictatorship, is not a place where this type of freelance political activity routinely occurs. As such, these weapons transfers should be understood as the policy emanating from Damascus.
Despite Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem’s denial to Pelosi of any smuggling of weapons across the border to Lebanon, Syrian weapons transfers to Hizballah remain a problem. It’s ironic that the UN is leading the charge against this counterproductive development as Pelosi and the US Congress—both Democrats and some Republicans—are looking to rehabilitate Damascus.