June 24, 2010 - Daily Star - French MPs urge Paris to link Syria ties to its progress on Lebanon relations

BEIRUT: A French parliamentary committee recommended that the Paris administration to tie its open policy toward Syria to Damascus’ cooperation to key issues, including the demarcation of borders with Lebanon, as well as the file of the missing and detained Lebanese there.

The French Parliament’s Foreign Affairs committee headed by lawmakers Elisabeth Guigou from the Socialist party and Renaud Muselier from the Union for a Popular Movement recently issued a report assessing French-Syrian ties in the past four years.

Excerpts of the report were published in Arabic on Wednesday in Lebanon’s As-Safir newspaper.

France and Syria’s tied suffered terribly following the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, who was a personal friend of President Jaques Chirac. The attack was widely blamed on Syria who denied any responsibility, though Damascus denies involvement.

However, a warming of ties took place following the election of Nicholas Sarkozy in 2007.

In their report, Guigou and Muselier said diplomatic ties ought to be tied to the extent to which Syria was willing to cooperate on certain crucial issues.

The report said ever since the Syrian-French ties were revived in 2007, cooperation between the two countries on the political level “only witnessed a limited development especially when it comes to border demarcation with Lebanon and the issue of the Lebanese detained and missing in Syria.”

“France should not accept this. Damascus expects a lot from Paris and we should only help based on progress made on key issues,” the French lawmakers wrote in the report.

As-Safir said that while Guigou and Muselier presented their view on the state of ties between their country and Syria, their recommendations work as a precursor to what France’s diplomatic policy will look like in the upcoming months.

The report said France’s demand to demarcate the Lebanese-Syrian borders was tied to a need to establish a “regional security net” that includes Israel.



“Resolving border problems is crucial to enhance regional security and combat the smuggling of weapons, which Syria uses to control Hizbullah,” the report said.

The lawmakers also accused Syria of working as a “weapons cache” for Hizbullah and a haven for Hizbullah and Hamas fighters to train and reside. Syria repeatedly denied Israeli allegations that it was supplying Hizbullah with Scud missiles. The report also raised question marks about a February meeting in Damascus that grouped Syrian President Bashar Assad, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hizbullah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah. The lawmakers quoted French diplomats as saying that Assad informed them that he wanted to play the role of mediator between Iran and Hizbullah, on the one hand, and the West on the other. They said Assad used the meeting to “prohibit” Ahmedinejad and Nasrallah from launching any attacks on Israel.

The French report slammed Damascus for failing to appoint experts on the joint Syrian-Lebanese border demarcation committee. In their meeting in Damascus last week, Lebanon and Syria’s presidents called for steps to be taken toward fixing their countries’ common border as soon as possible.

The report also quoted Lebanese President Michel Sleiman as expressing dissatisfaction with the fact that his Syrian counterpart was holding talks with Lebanese party leaders instead of limiting his meetings with Lebanese officials.

On Tuesday, Free Patriotic Movement leader Michel Aoun visited Assad in Damascus.

Syria and Lebanon established formal diplomatic relations in October 2008, more than 60 years after independence from a French mandate.

Syrian troops entered Lebanon during its 1975-90 Civil War and remained there until 2005. – The Daily Star