Middle East trouble to hit fuel price
Who learned genocide from his father It seems Britain broke the law so international law could be upheld We were right to act.. not stepping in would have emboldened Assad
joined the exodus. At the same time, Russian military vehicles were seen arriving in the town they left behind.
President Assad’s troops retook full control of Douma yesterday, Russian news agencies claimed.
The town, on the outskirts of Damascus, was the last rebel-held area in Syria’s eastern Ghouta region. weapons and gas. More than 5.5million have fled to other countries, while 6.5million are displaced internally.
Besides chemicals, the Assad regime has used barrel bombs – large containers with shrapnel Assad’s forces had pulverised it in years of siege, air raids and chemical attacks – including one in 2013.
The latest chemical attack last Saturday is believed to have been a barrel bomb packed with chlorine gas, possibly mixed with the nerve agent sarin. The gas paralyses the lungs and suffocates victims in minutes. Even a and explosive materials. It has also executed 13,000 in mass hangings at one jail, says Amnesty International.
The president took over in 2000 from his father Hafez al-Assad – and evidently learned a lot from him about tiny dose kills or leads to brain damage. Pictures released by the White Helmets – Syria’s rescue volunteers – showed children in oxygen masks struggling for breath.
Victims were said to have foamed at the mouth and had convulsions consistent with a nerve agent. At least 70 died and hundreds more injured. genocide. The elder Assad slaughtered 20,000 citizens in 1982 as he razed Hama to crush a Sunni rebellion.
It is regarded as the bloodiest modern-day massacre by an Arab ruler against his own people. The UN gives no permission for attacks to stop use of chemical weapons The claimed rationale from the US, France and Britain for the air strikes is to do with preventing and punishing the use of chemical weapons.
But the UN’s Chemical Weapons Convention gives no such permission and therefore the lawfulness of the strikes is extremely dubious.
In a sense what the US, UK and France have argued is that they can break international law in order to uphold international law.
The only way they could justify it is to say a customary international legal rule has emerged that allows the use of force to prevent and punish the use of chemical weapons.
But the only way really of knowing whether it has fully emerged is by looking at the reaction of other states.
Iran has already described these attacks as a crime. And I suspect that Russia, China and Iran will all deny that this new rule has emerged.
But despite the legal basis for attacking Syria being very weak, this I think people often look at the potential consequences of taking action, but they don’t look at the consequences of not taking action – which are often much more serious.
Like President Obama in 2013 when he threatened to deal with Syria and then didn’t. It’s not just Syria that sees that weakness, but the entire world.
And we saw the consequence of his failure to act with Russia’s aggression in Ukraine, its intervention in Syria and with Iranian aggression around the region. These are the sort of consequences if you don’t act.
These are the two countries that we should worry about more than Syria, particularly Iran. Iran and Russia are both enormous threats to world peace.
Without their backing Assad would not be in the strong position he is now. PETROL prices are forecast to hit a three-year high and rise 2p a litre in the wake of the Syrian air strikes and rising tension in the Middle East.
Global oil prices jumped two dollars to almost $73 a barrel before the missile strikes early yesterday. Motoring BY PROF JAMES SWEENEY
doesn’t mean it was the wrong thing to do. I’ve done lots of work in Kosovo and I know for certain many of my friends there wouldn’t be alive if we hadn’t intervened in former Yugoslavia in 1999 without the permission of the UN Security Council.
So I don’t think lawyers have a monopoly on wisdom. In the report of the Independent International Commission on Kosovo that followed, our action was, probably correctly, described as ‘illegal but legitimate’.
It would be perfectly lawful for Syria to respond to the strikes with military action of their own.
But while I say they would probably be lawful in doing so, it would mark a huge escalation and so it is my hope all the leaders will take a deep breath and get back to the negotiating table.
And I think that is what will happen. BY COL RICHARD KEMP
I would have liked to have seen a much harder attack than we had to send a stronger message. But clearly the French, British and Americans made every effort they could to avoid hitting the Russians. The last thing they wanted was to provoke any kind of tit-for-tat exchange with Russia.
I don’t think Russia was ever going to retaliate against what we did in Syria. I think that was just their sabre rattling and empty threats.
There’s no way that they will go to war with the United States for something the US did in Syria, particularly because it’s a war they couldn’t possibly win. experts say the rise in pump prices will be felt in the next fortnight.
RAC spokesman Simon Williams said: “The oil markets will be very uneasy. We know tensions cause oil prices to rise.”
The average cost of petrol at the pumps is currently 121.1p per litre, while diesel stands at 123.7p.