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European Union Debates Arming Syrian Rebels European Union Debates Arming Syrian Rebels
(about 7 hours later)
BRUSSELS — European Union foreign ministers gathered here on Monday amid deep divisions over whether to allow member countries to send lethal aid to the Syrian opposition. BRUSSELS — European Union foreign ministers were deadlocked on Monday over whether to allow member countries to send lethal aid to the Syrian opposition.
Britain is pressing hardest for the union to amend an embargo and allow weapons shipments to forces opposing the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, whose troops have made gains recently. “How long can we go on with people having every weapon that’s ever been devised dropped on them while most of the world denies them the means to defend themselves? That is creating extremism, it is radicalizing people,” William Hague, the British foreign secretary, warned in comments to reporters at the start of the meeting. The ministers’ meeting in Brussels exposed deep rifts, with Britain pressing hardest for the union to amend its embargo and allow weapon shipments to forces fighting President Bashar al-Assad and his troops, who have gained ground recently against the rebellion.
Mr. Hague said he would seek “common ground” with his European partners but added that “doing the right thing for Syria” is “more important than whether the E.U. is able to stick together on every detail of this.” As the meeting continued into Monday evening, Britain faced resistance from Austria, the Czech Republic and Sweden, which strongly oppose weapons shipments that they say could preclude a diplomatic solution and prolong the bloodshed.
At a news conference before a separate meeting in Brussels on relations between Turkey and the European Union, Ahmet Davutoglu, the Turkish foreign minister, said he supported the lifting of the arms embargo against Syria. “If we do not prevent this through the U.N. Security Council, at least we need to support the right of self-defense,” he said. France supported Britain’s position, but called for a wider consensus.
France supports that position but has signaled the need for consensus. Austria, Sweden and the Czech Republic are deeply skeptical about easing the embargo. They distrust large parts of the opposition, and they fear the weapons will end up in the hands of jihadist groups and inflame fighting in the Middle East. “It’s very important that Europe takes a unified position,” Laurent Fabius, the French foreign minister, told reporters as he left for Paris to attend another meeting on Syria, this one with the American secretary of state, John Kerry, and Sergey Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister.
“I think the European Union has to hold the line,” Michael Spindelegger, the Austrian foreign minister, told reporters before the talks. “We are a peace community,” and sending lethal weapons “would be a reversal of our policy,” he warned. “The unfortunate spectacle of division,” Mr. Fabius said, would “reduce our leverage in future negotiations” with the warring parties in Syria.
These governments say funneling arms to the opposition now would undermine the chances of a deal with the Assad regime before a planned peace conference in Geneva sponsored by the United States and Russia. Mr. Fabius said there were “growing suspicions” of “localized” chemical weapons use in Syria. He said the evidence needed “very detailed verification,'’ adding: “We are consulting with our partners to examine what specific consequences to draw.”
Austria has also warned that easing the embargo would endanger Austrian troops who patrol the United Nations cease-fire line in the Golan Heights, on the border between Israel and Syria. Mr. Fabius was speaking after the French newspaper Le Monde reported that the Syrian government had used canisters of some form of toxic gas against rebel forces in the Damascus suburb of Jobar.
The embargo was imposed to hobble the Assad regime’s capacity to trade and raise money, and to curb the movements and personal wealth of Mr. Assad’s family and associates. Le Monde said it had placed two journalists with the rebels for two months, and that a photographer working for the paper “suffered blurred vision and respiratory difficulties for four days” after inhaling a gas on April 13.
But the embargo is expiring at the end of the week, and that has put pressure on ministers to reach a deal, with some modifications promising the prospect of additional help for opposition fighters. Correspondent Jean-Philippe Rémy reported that the gas canisters opened with a “click,'’ not an explosion, and emitted an agent that was colorless and invisible. He wrote that the use of the gas was not uncommon in small areas that were the sites of intense fights.
Other governments, like the one in the Netherlands, said reaching a unified position was vital. “We need to find some middle ground,” Frans Timmermans, the Dutch minister of foreign affairs, said before the meeting. He quoted a Syrian doctor, “Dr. Hassan O.,” who described the symptoms. “The people who arrive have trouble breathing,” he said. “Their pupils are constricted. Some are vomiting. They’ve lost their hearing, they cannot speak, their respiratory muscles have been inert. If we don’t give them immediate emergency treatment, death ensues.'’
“Already now quite a lot of arms are going to the wrong hands even with a European arms embargo,” Mr. Timmermans said. But “if changing the arms embargo could send a clear message to Assad saying, you know, the other parties will also have access to arms if you don’t go to Geneva to negotiate, then in that context changing the arms embargo could be a useful tool.” The paper gave no details on what the gas might have been, and said some of the rebels were using gas masks.
Mr. Timmermans said he and his German counterpart, Guido Westerwelle, were part of efforts to reach a compromise. One possible agreement would involve easing the arms embargo if there was no progress at the planned peace talks in Geneva. Other elements of a compromise could involve limiting the types of weapons allowed, and which rebel groups may receive them. Mr. Assad, in an interview with the Clarín newspaper of Argentina, dismissed accusations by the rebels that his forces had used them, noting that such weapons “would mean killing thousands or tens of thousands of people in a matter of minutes — who could hide something like that?”
“There are strong views in favor of trying to find a way that Europe can demonstrate not only that it is united but also that it has a good and strong position to take forward,” said Catherine Ashton, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, who sets the agenda for such meetings. One factor influencing the E.U. arms debate is the support that the Assad government is receiving from its backers. The number of Iranian arms flights to Damascus initially dipped after Mr. Kerry raised American concerns with Iraq’s Prime Minister Nouri Kamal al-Maliki during a trip to Baghdad in March about the need to inspect Iranian planes crossing Iraqi airspace. But in early May, the pace of Iranian flights picked up, according to American intelligence.
Mr. Kerry, who arrived in Paris on Monday, and his counterparts are trying to lay the groundwork for an international meeting in Geneva next week that the United States hopes will bring together representatives of Mr. Assad’s government and the Syrian opposition. The Assad government has indicated that it is prepared to attend, but the Syrian opposition is still in the process of picking new leaders and it is not yet clear which opposition leaders might be prepared to go to the Geneva session.
The Pentagon has also expressed concerns about the recent delivery to Syria from Russia of sophisticated anti-ship cruise missiles. Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chief, has said that it may embolden Mr. Assad. Both the United States and Israeli have pressed Russia not to deliver yet another weapon: the S-300 air defense system. And Hezbollah has not only been sending fighters to Syria but has been sending military supplies to them from Lebanon, Syrian rebel commanders have told American officials.
Navi Pillay, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, said in Geneva on Monday that not enough was being done for Syrian civilians trying to escape from one of the latest battle fronts in Syria, the embattled town of Qusayr. On Monday, Ms. Pillay called for safe passage for civilians, voiced concern at reports that hundreds of people had been killed or injured by indiscriminate shelling, and said that thousands of people were trapped in the area by the fighting.
Overall, she said, the international community is failing in its duty to victims of the conflict, invoking the responsibility of governments to protect civilians of other countries from war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.
“Appalling violations of the most basic human rights are occurring in Syria, and I fear that we in the international community are failing to meet our fundamental obligations to the victims,” she said.
Ms. Pillay, speaking at the opening of a session of the Human Rights Council, repeated an appeal for the Security Council to refer Syria to the International Criminal Court in The Hague for prosecution of war crimes suspects. A special Syria-focused session of the rights council is expected in the next few days, called by Qatar, Turkey and the United States.
All parties to Syria’s conflict have shown “flagrant disregard of international law and human life,” Ms. Pillay said, pointing to what she called indiscriminate and disproportionate use of force by the government and the targeting of civilian locations such as schools and hospitals, as well as “gruesome crimes” she said were committed by antigovernment forces, including torture and executions.
On Monday, Yara Abbas, a journalist for the Syrian state-owned television station Ikhbariya TV, was fatally shot while in the suburbs of Qusayr while accompanying Syrian forces that came under fire, said activists.
But while fighting flares in the Qusayr area along the Lebanese border, pressure is mounting on the diplomatic front to reach an agreement on modifying the arms embargo because the European bloc’s existing sanctions package will lapse after Friday. A new deal could extend existing sanctions, including a freeze on Syrian bank assets and travel bans on individuals. But a decision on the future of the embargo requires unanimity among the Union’s 27 countries.
A stalemate that caused the sanctions to lapse would be another serious embarrassment for the bloc, which has struggled to present a united front on plans to quell a four-year old sovereign debt crisis that has slowed the economy and led to skyrocketing unemployment.
Earlier in the day, William Hague, the British foreign secretary, threatened to abandon the sanctions package in favor of unilateral arms shipments.
Britain would seek “common ground” with its European partners but “doing the right thing for Syria” is “more important than whether the E.U. is able to stick together on every detail of this,” Mr. Hague told reporters.
“How long can we go on with people having every weapon that’s ever been devised dropped on them while most of the world denies them the means to defend themselves? That is creating extremism, it is radicalizing people,” said Mr. Hague.
A key sticking point at the meeting is whether to set a deadline, perhaps as soon as July or August, to begin shipping weapons to anti-Assad forces. The French and British want to start making such shipments without the need for a further decision by E.U. ministers. But other states do not want any shipments of lethal aid to kick in automatically.
Austria, Sweden and the Czech Republic have displayed the strongest resistance to easing the embargo. These countries distrust large parts of the Syrian opposition, and they fear the weapons will end up in the hands of jihadist groups and inflame fighting in the Middle East.
They also say funneling arms to the opposition now would undermine the chances of a deal with the Assad regime before the planned peace conference in Geneva.

Nick Cumming-Bruce coontributed from Geneva; Hania Mourtada contributed from Beirut, and Michael Gordon and Steven Erlanger contributed from Paris.