RTMon, 30 Jan 2017 21:23 UTC
© APRussian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, meeting in Moscow Jan. 16, 2017.
Russia may support the US initiative to establish so-called 'safe zones' for refugees in Syria, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said.
The plan would require close cooperation with the UN and approval from Syrian President Bashar Assad's government, he added.
Lavrov said the American proposal to create secure areas for refugees within Syria was put forward in the context of migrant flows to the neighboring countries, the Middle East, as well as Europe, and "
at the end of the day, the US."
"
If this is about the people who were forced to leave their homes by the conflict, [...] getting their basic needs covered, [...] then I think that the idea to create areas within Syria for those internally displaced could be discussed with the UN's High Commissioner for Refugees and other organizations," he said.
Though promising, the proposal would require negotiations with Damascus to agree on the principles of creating such safe zones on Syrian territory, Lavrov added.
Hours after his interview, the state-run Sana news agency published a statement from the government saying that
any attempt to install safe zones without its consent would constitute a "violation of Syria's sovereignity."He noted that
the US initiative is completely different from what Western countries proposed at various stages of the Syrian war.
"
There have been ideas of creating some areas where an alternative Syrian government could sit, and use those areas for regime change."
Such a scheme was seen in Libya, where the establishment of an alternative government in Benghazi was used as a pretext for the Western-led invasion to topple the regime of Muammar Gaddafi, Lavrov explained, adding that the Libyan intervention went ahead despite no green light from the UN Security Council.
On Thursday, US President Donald Trump said on ABC that he will "
absolutely do safe zones in Syria for the people."
He did not elaborate, but did say that Europe has been profoundly wrong to allow "
these millions of people to go into Germany and various other countries."
Commenting on the statement, the Kremlin said that the White House did not consult Russian authorities on the initiative. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said it was "
important to make sure that this does not further aggravate the situation with refugees."
Comment: Many in the alt media seem to have lost the plot on this one. There's nothing inherently wrong with a no-fly/safe zone. The reasons it was such a big deal when Clinton proposed it were the following:
- for her, a no-fly zone means a zone where no one can fly except American bombers, who then drop bombs (as in Libya)
- for her, a safe zone meant a place to keep terrorists where they cannot be harmed, who will eventually take power
- for her, a safe zone would be a declaration of war on Russia, and requires the destruction of the target country's anti-air defense systems (because such a safe zone is to be implemented unilaterally and against the government in question)
That's obviously not what Trump is proposing, as Lavrov pointed out above. The Syrian government would have nothing wrong with a real safe/no-fly zone, as long as they agreed to it and it did what it was supposed to. Also consider
this bit of rumor about Tulsi Gabbard's recent trip to Syria, and the messages she is said to have delivered to Assad:
The second message has to do with Trump's willingness to help the Syrian government to control the out-flux of refugees by establishing a "safe zone" for Syrians in areas controlled by either the Syrian Army or the Russian Air Force. I have been informed that Dr. Assad has accepted this kind of benign interference as long as it was coordinated with the Syrian government.
The third message she carried to Dr. Assad was that the U.S. is intent upon wiping out every vestige of ISIS and Alqaeda, and, that it would do so in coordination with Russia and the Syrian government.
Comment: Many in the alt media seem to have lost the plot on this one. There's nothing inherently wrong with a no-fly/safe zone. The reasons it was such a big deal when Clinton proposed it were the following: