British Christians meet clerics in Damascus hours after attacks
Church representatives and peers on Syria visit warmly greeted by Grand Mufti despite bombings
A GROUP of British peers and Christian leaders have been criticised for meeting with Syrian officials in Damascus, hours after UK jets struck the regime’s chemical weapons facilities.
The delegation, led by Rev Andrew Ashdown, an Anglican vicar, included Giles Fraser, a columnist and priest, Baroness Cox and Lord Dykes, cross bench peers, as well as Michael Langrish, the former bishop of Exeter, The Daily Telegraph understands.
The trip had been organised several months ago, but some questioned why it was not postponed given the sensitive timing.
The delegation arrived on Saturday morning – a few hours after the RAF fired Storm Shadow missiles on a target near Homs – and yesterday met with Hammouda Youssef Sabbagh, speaker of the People’s Council of Syria, and 20 MPS, where they discussed “illegal” strikes on Syria.
“With the Grand Mufti of Syria – the top Muslim cleric in Syria – in the astonishing Umayyad Mosque in central Damascus talking about how love is stronger than missiles,” Mr Fraser tweeted yesterday. “Very warm greeting despite the bombings.”
There was also the possibility of a visit to Eastern Ghouta, the site of the chemical attack that left more than 40 dead. A meeting with Bashar al-assad is not on their itinerary, although members of the delegation have met the leader during previous trips.
One delegate said there had been discussion about cancelling it but they ultimately decided it should go ahead, adding: “The timing is absolutely nuts.”
Britain severed diplomatic relations with Syria’s regime after Assad’s forces massacred 108 civilians in the Houla area in May 2012. Despite the policy, a number of high profile British politicians and other figures have visited him.
David Davis, then a backbencher but now Brexit Secretary, saw Assad in 2016 as part of a “fact-finding” mission.
The delegates’ intention was to highlight the plight of minority Christians in Syria, a sect largely protected by Assad, but critics said the group had instead given legitimacy to the regime.
“When British peers and Christian clergy have been to Damascus in the past, they were rightly condemned as
‘With the top Muslim cleric in central Damascus talking about how love is stronger than missiles’
presenting an image of appeasement to Assad’s regime, and showing him as some sort of protector of Christians, as though Syrian Muslims mattered for nought,” said H A Hellyer, senior research fellow at the Atlantic Council and the Royal United Services Institute in London.
“Contacts already exist between the UK and the Assad regime through different channels, which do not show an endorsement of the regime – this, on the other hand, is done for no other reason except to give Damascus a chance to push propaganda.”
Pope Francis, meanwhile, said yesterday that he was “deeply disturbed” by the international community’s failure to come up with a common response to the crisis in Syria. “Despite the tools available to the international community, it is difficult to agree on a common action toward peace in Syria,” he told a crowd of 30,000. He called on “all people of goodwill” to join him in praying for peace and appealed to political leaders to help “justice prevail”. ♦a Russian journalist who wrote about the deaths of Russian mercenaries in Syria has died after falling from his apartment balcony.
Novy Den, the news website, said Maxim Borodin, its reporter, died at a hospital yesterday after he fell from his fifth-floor balcony in Yekaterinburg, a city east of the Ural Mountains, on Thursday. The cause of the fall was unclear. Russian news reports cited police as saying the apartment was locked from the inside.
He regularly wrote about crime and corruption and recently wrote extensively about the deaths in February of Russian mercenaries fighting in Syria.