Al-Jaafari: Geneva 2 is required to help Syrian people, end terrorism

Member of the Syrian official delegation taking part in the international conference on Syria “Geneva 2”, Dr. Bashar al-Jaafari stressed that the conference is required to help the Syrian people, end terrorism and exert pressure on the countries supporting it to stop their support, adding that the Syrian people is the only side which will decide the future of Syria and not this minister of that.

Al-Jaafari, at a press conference in Montruex city after the second session of the conference, added “The Syrian people is the side which will decide its future and this is not subject to discussions and all suppositions you have heard from people before me are useless and unrealistic.”

He pointed out that the Syrian-Syrian dialogue led by the Syrians themselves to reach an understanding between the Syrian government and opposition in addition to the direct dialogue sessions between the two delegations in presence of the UN Envoy to Syria Lakhdar Brahimi that might take place later, aims to implement Geneva 1 Communique far from selectivity since the Communique should be implemented as a package by all sides.

Al-Jaafari stressed that the Syrian government has fulfilled its commitment to attend this important conference through a delegation headed by Deputy Prime Minister, Foreign and Expatriates Minister, noting that Syria has some observations on the meeting today as the list of invitees to the conference two days ago included 30 countries and then the organizers of this meeting at the UN Secretariat added 10 other countries and today we have 40 states who have been previously chosen, most of them are delegations against Syria; that is they came from governments which have hostile policies to the Syrian government.

The UN Secretary-General excluded Iran and added 10 new countries at the same time and this created a sort of imbalance and this is the first observation. The second observation is that the majority of speeches delivered by participants today did not encourage national dialogue; their speeches were merely provocative speeches and they were using old language based on hostility to the policies and stances of the Syrian government, al-Jaafari went on to say.

Al-Jaafari added that the so-called “opposition’s delegation” that has participated in the conference is a delegation of the “coalition” only as there were not national opposition figures from outside the “coalition” and hence the delegation does not represent all the Syrian opposition. “We have called upon UN Secretary-General and Brahimi to take this note into serious consideration and invite sides of the Syrian national opposition in and abroad Syria,” he said.

Al-Jaafari pointed out that the Geneva 1 Communique should not be implemented in a selective way; it should be implemented as complete package, calling on those who want to help the Syrians to participate in ending violence as a goal of the Geneva conference, stressing that Syria possesses documents that confirm the Turkish official support to terrorism in Syria, considering that the Qatari foreign minister’s defense of the takfiri Wahabi mentality proves Qatar’s support to terrorism.

He added, “Syria needs the genuine implementation of Geneva 1 conference and in order to do that we all need to put an end to terrorism and violence because the political settlement cannot be consistent with terrorism.”

“Those who are behind the terrorist acts in Syria must choose between being firefighters or fire arsonists, and I am saying this because this was the issue of the conference’s agenda from the beginning,” al-Jaafari added.

Al-Jaafari reviewed different phases of the crisis in Syria, including the initiatives presented for solving it, starting from the Arab observers mission whose report was prevented from being viewed by the UN Security Council to the six-point plan submitted by former UN Envoy to Syria, Kofi Annan, and the mission of the international observers headed by General Robert Mood, stressing that all these initiatives were based on ending violence as the first priority, pointing out that this is an internationally acceptable language and this is why Syria focuses on it and considers that those who want to help should help the Syrians first.

“The fact is that 99% of this violence is based on terrorism and I have sent 500 official letters to the UN Secretary-General and Security Council since the beginning of the crisis and 267 letters of those are on combating terrorism in Syria with the names and nationalities, date of birth, father’s name and mother’s name of terrorists who were killed in Syria,” al-Jaafari said.

He pointed out that the letter which was sent on November 15, 2012 documented the presence of terrorists from Saudi Arabia, Libya and Tunisia, citing in this regard the statement of former U.S. Secretary of Defense, Leon Panetta, in which he acknowledged that there are countries supporting militarily and providing the terrorists with weapons and then French President Francois Hollande acknowledged that there are French jihadists fighting in Syria and these acknowledgments were followed by British Foreign Minister, William Hague, who acknowledged the presence of British extremists fighting in Syria.

Al-Jaafari said that leader of al-Qaeda, Aiman al-Zawahiri, has given orders to his gunmen to escalate “Jihad” in Syria in November 2012 while weapons were crossing the Turkish borders and the Turkish government was facilitating the entry of terrorists across the border, and we have the names and nationalities of more than 500 terrorists who entered Syria through the Turkish borders.

He reminded of the Libyan ship “Lutfallah 2” which was loaded with tons of weapons, adding that three Saudi airplanes were transferring terrorists belonging to al-Qaeda to Syria in addition to the announcement of the “Salafi Jihadist Movement” in Jordan that more than 9,000 terrorists were killed in Syria and this is documented by Jordan.

He referred to a number of documents concerning the terrorists dismantling factories in Aleppo and transferring the parts to Turkey and conducting experiments on chemical weapons in Gaziantep which they were preparing to use against the civilians in Syria and this indeed took place in Khan al-Assal in March 2013, noting that all this was documented and sent in official letters to the UN Security Council.

Al-Jaafari said that the documents prove that Turkey and Qatar purchased weapons from Switzerland and Belgium and transferred them to the terrorists in Syria who they call “peaceful protesters.”

Al-Jaafari stressed that all laws related to combating al-Qaeda and terrorism highlight the importance of all countries’ participation in that and preventing the support of terrorism; therefore, Syria, in its calls for fighting terrorism depends on legal rules from the international law and the Security Council resolutions and all sides have to take part in this process.

He revealed that the photos, which were alleged to be related to chemical weapons’ use and nearly caused a US aggression on Syria, were fabricated according to U.S. centers, adding that the report of Ake Sellstrom confirmed that all these reports and photos were baseless and indicated that Syrian army officers and soldiers were killed by chemical weapons.

Al-Jaafari said that these photos were fabricated by the so-called “Gulf Cooperation Council” in its meeting in Kuwait on December 19th, adding that “I do not deny that there are victims, torture, killing, mistakes and tragedies happen in Syria or any other country in the world, but that issue is of a national, not international, investigation. Why, then, the International Criminal Court did not trial US former president George Bush or former British Prime Minister Tony Blair for killing more than a million Iraqi persons and destructing Iraq? And why former and current French presidents were not brought to courts for destructing Libya.”

Al-Jaafari said that the French government has killed terrorist Mohammad Murah in Leone by 300 bullets and at the same time it is training and arming terrorists before sending them to Syria and call them “revolutionists”.

He added that British Foreign Minister announced that nationality was withdrawn from 500 Briton terrorists who are fighting in Syria as to prevent them from returning to the UK, adding that such act is considered as incitement to terrorism because London wants these terrorists to stay and fight in Syria.