Al-Moallem: Coalition delegation so-called “opposition” must abandon their illusions before coming back to Geneva

Deputy Prime Minister, Foreign and Expatriates Minister, Head of the Syrian Arab Republic’s delegation to Geneva 2 Conference, Walid al-Moallem, stressed that the Syrian side rejected a U.S. request in Montruex for direct dialogue with the Syrian delegation without “the tools embodied in the coalition delegation so-called ‘opposition’ unless U.S. Secretary of State, John Kerry, apologizes for what he had said during the opening speech of the conference.”

In a statement to the media delegation accompanying the official delegation aboard the plane which is taking the delegation back to Damascus, al-Moallem said, in response to a question on the rejection of coalition to the draft statement submitted by the Syrian official delegation condemning terrorism, “This rejection is a smirch on the forehead of the coalition’s delegation, and as I said yesterday that any person in the world who suffered from terrorism will adopt this draft statement.”

“They have not lived in Syria; they were not with the school and university students when mortar shells fell on them; the bodies of their relatives were not amputated, and they did not suffer from destruction of bridges, gas pipelines and infrastructure; they live in 5-star hotels, so it is not strange that they rejected because they do not live in the Syrian reality,” al-Moallem added.

Al-Moallem pointed out that who controls the coalition delegation, which is the US, will reject the Syrian draft statement in spite of the fact that its top commitments, being a permanent UN Security Council member, is to agree because the draft statement was based on the UNSC resolutions and some of them are binding resolutions under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter.

Answering a question on the unjust sanctions imposed on the Syrian people, al-Moallem said, “We are dealing with an international community whose majority is unjust; it is an international community that adopts double standards policy and mostly dominated by the US, so when they say ‘international community’ we laugh as they do not represent the international community for if we take into consideration the population of Russia, China, India and the BRICS countries, we find that they are the international community and not the other side, but they dominate the UN Security Council and the UN.”

He wondered, “How does the west want to be in Geneva dialogue and they impose sanctions on the Syrian people and children?” adding that he asked Catherine Ashton, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, in Montruex to explain how the west bans milk and food stuff on the Syrian people, and on the other hand the west presents the issue of humanitarian aid shipments.