‘West seeks new Sykes-Picot on Syria’
Webster Griffin Tarpley, author and historian from Washington, has joined Press TV’s Debate to discuss the prospects of peace in Syria regarding the talks in Montreux.
- Well, Webster Griffin Tarpley, as one of the countries setting the stage for this breakthrough, I mean we are looking at three years and all the hard work that this particular country was involved behind the scenes and of course in public, is the United States. And I do not know if you caught the statements there either earlier in the day and just now in the press conference. We know that John Kerry and the US, is against Assad, we know that they want him out of power but did not he go overboard in just going on and on? I mean he at one point said that 130,000 people that have been killed is Assad’s fault and his security apparatus’.
That is just not the way to set for diplomatic stage to try to resolve this very important crisis. Is it?
- I think that the only terms for the unfortunate Secretary Kerry are power, paranoia, hysteria, the rejection of any reality. We have to remember that this charming gentleman is from the infamous skull and bones secret society of Yale University. He presumably owes much of his carrier to the backing of that very corrupt and very bloody network which has played such a role in all the disasters, wars, of the United States recently.
The Obama administration has come to this primarily because of the diplomatic finesse and capability of Putin, Lavrov along with Iran and some other countries.
They really have no alternative but to come there but then they make these embarrassing statements, I think this is really lamentable.
The other thing I would say, Ban Ki-moon should resign. This comedy that we had of Ban Ki-moon in a moment of lucidity extending an invitation to Iran, which was perfectly justified, and then being forced to take this back, the strings connecting the puppet Ban Ki-moon to the state department have become much too visible.
Now he has to quit and then this performance today, this diplomatic affront of interrupting the Syrian Foreign Minister Muallem, who as you can see is a person of tremendous dignity and moral authority, I would say based on the speech that he gave, to interrupt him in the middle and say please wrap it up, we are out of time, as if he were some kind of unruly school boy.
Ban Ki-moon is completely disqualified. He has always been a US and NATO puppet and now he should go. This was Montreux today, we are going on to Geneva but we cannot have the United Nations under the control of such a person.
The United Nations risks going the way of the League of Nations unless Ban Ki-moon is taken out of the picture.
- Webster Griffin Tarpley, terrorism has been a focus that has been presented by the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Waleed al-Muallem the foreign minister also stated that, Iran has stated that it should be the focus and not only just only just the focus but a priority. Now can we deduct from that statement that everything else might fall in line, where terrorism to be actually officially not only acknowledged by the UN, by the UN-Arab League envoy Lakhdar Brahimi but presented with other countries that that should be at the fore front of this conference?
We had Bashar al-Jafari present what he said over 500 letters, 267 of them, 27 kilograms, I think he said, of letters of terrorists, dead terrorists, with their identity, with their mothers and fathers when he has the proof and the evidence there, why has not that has been dealt with before? Why is it not given the weight that it should be given, at this conference?
- What can we say, hysteria or schizophrenia perhaps better, in the state department and the US view.
Terrorism is bad in most of the world, but terrorism if it is in Syria or in Libya or in places like this, this becomes pro-democracy. I guess we can add Ukraine to the list.
Ironically the US government is mobilizing various capabilities today, to protect the Olympics in Sochi, against Chechen and Dagestan terrorists and these networks, Dokka Umarov and people like this.
These are exactly the same networks that have provided some of the most atrocious rebels fighters in Syria. So you can see that there is a real schizophrenic problem for people like Kerry. I would say to Kerry, if you think that response of Assad to this rebellion was brutal, and therefore he has lost legitimacy, you could make that exact same argument about Abraham Lincoln in 1864 and indeed the British and the French press in 1863 and 1864 and 1865 did make that same argument that Lincoln and the US government had completely lost legitimacy.
The question of terrorism, I think, the speech by Muallem is something that everybody should actually read. Ban Ki-moon was... freaking out, not just because of the time, I do not think that the time or anything to Ban Ki-moon... but the content of the speech by Muallem, it seems to me, is a really excellent summary of the actual facts in the case and what he points to, first of all, is that this is the ideology that comes from people like Khutba, the infamous enemy of President Nasser in Egypt, it has to do with the Wahhabis of course, and he talks even about Saudi Arabia. He obviously turned to the Saudi delegation and the US delegation and said: I am sitting in the same room with the people who have cynically sent these killers into my country, sent them arms, sent them money, given them diplomatic cover and now you are here at a peace conference.
He said, in effect you have sent us monsters in human form who are drunk on the ideology of Wahhabism.
I think that that sums up a great deal of what has happened in Syria. In terms of getting out of this, he says: we want to have a Syrian peace, this is about Syria after all, for starters let us limit this to Syrians. In other words the parties inside the country that ought to be negotiating, are the ones that are Syrian, not Libyans, not Saudis, not Chechens, not people from Waziristan, or any other place, but just Syria.
If you could secure the exist, the repatriation of the foreign fighters and the cutting off of the money and arms from Saudi Arabia and Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, this would already put the entire problem in a manageable form. It would not be the situation that we now have.
So I would again strongly recommend that people read Muallem’s speech. You can find it on the Sana News site. This is the document that Ban Ki-moon did not want the world to hear, and I think that it deserves to be heard.
- Webster Griffin Tarpley what do you think about that comment made by Geoffrey Alderman? I mean is that the way to go? Forget about this Syria conference that is being held in Montreux and then in Geneva and then have these countries work together in terms of having Iran and Saudi Arabia perhaps trying to resolve this crisis and to have some kind of a roadmap put in place?
- Well, I do not think that it is quite so hopeless in some parts of the world. I do think that the British and the French have decided to resurrect their Sykes-Picot or Entente Cordial 1902 alliance. They feel that there is a vacuum left by the US, they want to rush in.
Here in the US we have that statements right? We had Michael Hayden, the former head of the CIA, we had Ryan Crocker from the state department saying that Assad is the lesser evil and we have got these new reports from various papers that Britain, France, Germany, Spain have turned to Assad for anti-terrorism assistance. So you can see the implicit outlines of a possible solution.
Putin and Lavrov, of course are, I think you can think of this throwing Obama a lifeline, right? Obama threshing around very badly advised, certainly full of evil intent on certain days himself, but you could say, look now that Kerry has made these stupid remarks, he has satisfied AIPAC, he has satisfied the Saudis, he has made these bombast statements. Now let us get down to real business and the real business would have to be, it is time to dump those terrorists in Syria.
If anything happens at the Olympics, there is going to be a hue and cry and Obama, if he is smart, is not going to be on the side of that hue and cry that he is going to be found to be soft on terrorism.
We have the republicans here screaming about the four US nationals killed in Benghazi, Libya, in September 2012 and of course that was a serious matter. But imagine this screaming if it is Chechen terrorists killed a US Olympic team or something like this, and then it turns out that Obama is helping them to gain more power in Syria. So it seems to me that there is the possibility of something more constructive.
The other thing is that this guy Jarba, at the conference, who does he represent? He does not represent anything. The Nusra, he does not represent them, the Islamic Emirate of Iraq and Sham, he does not represent them. He does not represent the Islamic Front. Even these Syrian National Council people have now quitted. So Jarba is sitting there without visible means of support. He is the Syrian National Coalition but he represents virtually nobody. So I do not see how that side of it is going to work.
The only possible solution here is that the death squads, the terrorist rebels in Syria, are basically shown the exit. Get rid of them, cut off their support.