AVA - 'UN resolution on Syria, step by West toward intervention'

Despite a UN observer mission and consensus for diplomacy on Syria, certain Arab League countries continue their support of Syrian rebels on top of additional US sanctions against Damascus.

Press TV has interviewed Lizzie Phelan, a freelance journalist and broadcaster in Managua, Nicaragua, who has investigated the Syrian situation and provides her views on the dispatching of the UN observer mission to the Middle Eastern country.

Press TV: Africa's Kofi Annan's involvement in Syria... How do you think the situation has changed so far? And on that, at least one occasion the unarmed UN observers in Syria have started giving news to the media. Are they tasked with such an obligation in your opinion?

Phelan: Now we can clearly see that the US and NATO powers vote for the resolution for bring in more UN observers was nothing more than a PR exercise because already we have, before even the mission has got off the ground, we have the US and NATO slapping more sanctions on Syria, which is showing they are determined to do everything they can short of direct military intervention to pursue their very clear stated aim of regime change in Syria - the illegal aim of regime change in Syria.

Today we had the US imposing more sanctions on Syria saying they will sanction anybody who is violating human rights via information technology. So, they are accusing not just Syria actually, but also Iran, of monitoring the actions of so-called freedom fighters - of course, we know they are armed insurgents - via social networking sites and they are saying they will crackdown on agencies and individuals who pass on information about these people.

Of course, they have no basis for these allegations, but yet again it shows how we have the greatest criminal on this Earth, the US, thinking it has the right to say who is and who isn't the criminal.

And these sanctions are really something else surreal that comes out of the US because let's not forget that the greatest violators of human rights via information technology are countries like the US.

And let's not forget how the anti-terror laws were abused in the US. Do they not survey our emails, our post, our telephone conversations in violation of our human rights and our rights to privacy?

Or the British government less than a few months ago responsible for arresting a teenager for monitoring his Face Book when he posted a Face Book statement condemning the actions, the disgraceful actions of British troops in Afghanistan.

And last year the Wall Street Journal no less, reported that a subsidiary of the technology giant Intel had been providing content-filtering software to the regimes of Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. So, where are the US sanctions on Intel, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait?

Of course, there will never be sanctions on those regimes because they are pirate regimes of the US.

So, now with this cozy Annan and UN mission, already the reality is that even though they voted for the resolution in the UN, they actually in reality rejected it before it even got off the ground by continuing to provide money, weapons and support for the insurgents, which continue as your report correctly stated to commit atrocities against civilians and security forces inside Syria.

The agenda now is that they are desperately, desperately seeking a way in to get so-called humanitarian access in Syria. And if they get that so-called humanitarian access then they will accuse the Syrian government of not cooperating with the so-called humanitarian access and then they will seek military intervention with or without UN support.

Of course, it is very unlikely that they would get UN support with Russia and China continuing their strong stance.

However; anybody who analyzes the situation with any seriousness knows what any military intervention would lead to and that would be catastrophic. We only had Libya very recently that showed that any kind of so-called military intervention for humanitarian purposes there… the NATO bombing there caused at least 100,000 civilian deaths, which continue to this day at the hands of the NATO-backed rebels.

Press TV: Contrary to the situation in Libya and despite great pressures from the West and some neighboring countries the Syria government is still in tact. How united is the Syrian government in your opinion expected to be in the coming days in the future?

Phelan: Yes. I was just about to say that the situation in Libya and Syria is very different and even very senior members of the imperialist elite and the US administration etc mentioned that very recently.

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Martine Dempsey in the US had an interview with CNN that the military intervention in Syria would be completely different from Libya not least because of course Syria has international alliances with Iran, Russia and China and of course has the ability to strike at the NATO powers most important ally in the region of course the Zionist entity Israel.