Shane McEntee (Meath East, Fine Gael)

In a statement the Tánaiste outlined the widespread international revulsion at what is currently taking place in Syria and the steps which are being taken by concerned members of the international community to try to put a halt to the killings, repression and terror currently being inflicted by the Assad regime and its forces upon the Syrian people. The League of Arab States is playing a particularly important role at present in the peace plan outlined last November, and agreed at that stage by the Syrian authorities, which still provides the only credible plan for bringing the violence to an end and initiating a peaceful transition in Syria. The Arab League has made other important contributions to current efforts to resolve the crisis in Syria, including the monitoring mission deployed in late December and subsequently withdrawn due to the non-co-operation of the Syrian regime.

Arab League Ministers called for an international peacekeeping force to be deployed and the idea of a joint UN-Arab peacekeeping mission was positively considered at the recent meeting of the Friends of the Syrian People held in Tunis on 24 February, which the Tánaiste attended. However, a ceasefire would first need to be in place before any possible peacekeeping mission could be deployed. In addition, some form of authorisation or mandate for such a mission from the UN Security Council would be highly desirable. It is by no means clear that any such agreement would be forthcoming from the Security Council at present, given current Russian and Chinese attitudes. For the moment, international efforts to broker a ceasefire are concentrating on the mediation by the joint UN-Arab League special envoy, former UN Secretary General, Mr. Kofi Annan, whose mission Ireland and the EU fully support. It is hoped Mr. Annan will be in a position to travel to Damascus for discussions in the coming days.

In conclusion, I can only reiterate the Tánaiste's words of yesterday that there are no easy solutions to what is a very complex political situation now obtaining in Syria, nor should we view any form of external military intervention or, alternatively, arming the badly divided Syrian opposition, as offering any form of panacea. Such forms of action or intervention are, unfortunately, only likely to accelerate the descent into open civil war in Syria, a civil war, moreover, which would provide profound destabilisation for the entire region, not least neighbouring countries such as Iraq and Lebanon.

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