‘Delay accord with Syria’

Date: 31/03/05

The exiled leader of a Syrian opposition party has urged MEPs to delay approving an accord on closer EU ties with the Damascus government until it improves its track record on human rights and democracy.

Farid Ghadry, Washington-based head of the Reform Party of Syria, argued that Syria bears primary responsibility for stoking up tensions in neighbouring Lebanon prior to the recent assassination of its former premier Rafiq Hariri. A UN report in that killing, he noted, documented how Syrian President Bashar al-Assad had threatened Hariri with physical harm unless he dropped demands for Syrian troops to withdraw from Lebanon.

The EU concluded an association agreement bolstering trade and economic links with Syria in 2004, after four years of talks.

"By withholding the reward of ratification which the Syrian regime is seeking, the European Parliament can encourage change in Syria," Ghadry told the assembly's foreign affairs committee yesterday (30 March). "After all, that's the aim of the agreement."

Faïçal Kalthoum, chairman of the constitutional committee in the Syrian People's Assembly, said he would be against imposing democracy on the country. "Let us get our own house in order and stop putting pressure on us," he said.

Farid Ghadry, the exiled leader of the Reform Party of Syria, a Syrian opposition party, urged MEPs to delay approving an accord on closer EU ties with the Damascus government until it improved its track record on human rights and democracy.