Ex-defence chief blasts handling of Syria crisis
LORD RICHARDS, the former Chief of the Defence staff and one of Britain’s most decorated soldiers, will today criticise the Government’s ‘half-hearted’ handling of the crisis in Syria.
In an interview on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs, the former military commander will say the government’s failure to properly support the opposition in Syria has only ‘aggravated’ the country’s worsening humanitarian crisis.
He will also say that the West’s failure to properly welcome Russia back into the ‘community of nations’ was one of the great missed foreign policy opportunities of the 1990s.
In the programme, recorded before the outbreak of the crisis in Ukraine and Crimea, Lord Richards, who had overall responsibility for Britain’s armed forces between 2010 and 2013, will say: ‘What I keep saying to people is if you are going to intervene, do it properly. If you only do it halfheartedly or with insufficient resources, for example giving some help to the Syrian rebels but not the help that will make a decisive difference, you will actually aggravate things and you will certainly aggravate the humanitarian situation.’
The 62-year-old former soldier will say that the failure to act decisively means there is now a huge risk ‘of contagion’ in other parts of the region.
Among the Desert Island discs chosen by Lord Richards, who admits he has a huge interest in Russia, is a piece from Swan Lake and John Denver’s hit Leaving On A Jet Plane.
The show airs at 11.15am with a repeat on Friday at 9am.