Syria and the UN: Another polarizing double standard

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http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/11/04/opinion/edlone.php
Syria and the UN: Another polarizing double standard
By Salim Lone International Herald Tribune

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 2005
GENEVA The beginning of the drive to justify the use of force or other serious action against Syria for its possible involvement in Rafik Hariri's killing is reminiscent of the run-up to the 2003 U.S.-led war against Iraq. As it was then, the United Nations Security Council is the instrument for escalating the tensions, with its unanimously passed resolution demanding that Syria cooperate with the UN investigator Detlev Mehlis by arresting those he suspects of complicity in Hariri's death and that interrogations be conducted outside Syria.

If the Iraq experience is a guide, the demands will multiply regardless of the level of cooperation Syria offers, with the United States still free to resort to war if it chooses. With or without war, the resolution will intensify charges of UN double standards and further polarize Muslim-Western relations.

The arguments being advanced for intervention this time are infinitely more spurious than the claims that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. The highly speculative and overtly political Mehlis report relies on partisan witnesses, offers no concrete evidence that Syria was involved in Hariri's killing and in any event contends only that such involvement is probable.

The resolution's passage offers yet more proof that the Security Council is an instrument of Western power invoked principally for intimidating or punishing Arabs. It is not lost on the region that when Israel killed over a hundred Lebanese in Qana in 1996, and when hundreds of Palestinians were killed in Nablus, Jenin and elsewhere in 2003, no UN Security Council action against Israel was taken.