Putin stands up to G8 warmongers on Syria, reaffirming support for Assad govt

 

Source: Press TV
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/309760.html

Russian President Vladimir Putin can take credit for standing up to the G8 warmongers on Syria. Thanks to the feisty Russian leader’s political courage, an all-out war in Syria may have been averted - at least for now.

Only days ago, Western media were touting that Putin would be given a political drubbing at the G8 summit in Northern Ireland this week by the US, Britain and France - the three main NATO powers pushing for regime change in Syria.

The arrogance and spite awaiting Putin was summed up by Washington’s Canadian puppet prime minister, Stephen Harper, when he accused, through media channels, the Russian president of supporting “thugs in Syria”.

Harper said: “I don't think we should fool ourselves. This is G7 plus one. We in the West have a very different perspective on this situation. Mr Putin and his government are supporting the thugs of the Assad regime.”

When the conference opened, Putin didn’t waste time on a minion like Harper. He had bigger fish to fry. During the summit, Putin told Obama, Cameron and Hollande face-to-face that Russia was standing firm in its support for the government of President Bashar al Assad in Damascus. He warned that any plans by the Western powers to openly supply weapons to anti-government militants in Syria was against international law and would destabilize the region; and Putin refused to revoke a deal by Russia to deliver anti-aircraft defence missiles to Syria, pointing out that the transaction was a legal bilateral agreement between sovereign countries.

In one fell swoop, Putin used the auspices of the annual G8 forum to debunk Western lies and propaganda on Syria and to reiterate the facts of international relations, namely, that Syria is a sovereign country with a sovereign government.

Earlier, British Prime Minister David Cameron, who hosted the two-day summit in Enniskillen, County Fermanagh, was betting along with US President Barack Obama and French President Francois Hollande that the G8 meeting would cause Putin to wilt under their combined pressure.

Far from wilting, the Russian leader stood his ground and ended up tying his pusillanimous adversaries up in knots. Putin showed the courage of conviction; the others had the courage of conmen.

Last week, the Americans, British and French tried to pile the pressure on Putin with lurid claims that the Syrian government had used chemical weapons of mass destruction. Those claims were of course bogus, but they were aimed at creating a red line pretext for the NATO powers to openly begin sending weapons to their proxy mercenaries fighting in Syria to bring down Assad.

Washington duly followed last week with official approval for supplying weapons, at least in principle, just as the British and French had done in preceding weeks. The gang of three also mulled the setting up of “no-fly zones” on Syria’s southern flank over the border from Jordan. News that the Americans were leaving F-16 fighter jets, Osprey troop-carrying planes and Patriot missiles inside Jordan following recent war exercises may also be seen as a calculated threat of NATO intervention in Syria.

So, as the leaders of the G8 countries gathered in Northern Ireland at the start of this week, the pressure was on Putin to give ground on policy towards Russia’s ally, Syria. In particular, the objective of the US, Britain and France was to get the Russian leader to throw Syria’s Assad to the wolves.

The ousting of Assad has been the top foreign political priority of the Western regimes for more than two years. Under the cynical guise of supporting a “pro-democracy uprising”, Washington and the two former colonial powers have plunged Syria into a maelstrom of violence that has resulted in more than 90,000 deaths. The NATO brigands have in effect been holding a gun to the Syrian people’s head in a bid to enforce their criminal scheme of regime change.

Last weekend, former French Foreign Minister Roland Dumas confirmed this criminal conspiracy. Dumas told French media how British officials had briefed him on a secret plan for sabotaging Syria - more than two years before conflict in that country flared up in March 2011.

We also know from the American neocon Project for a New American Century and separate disclosures by former US NATO General Wesley Clark that Washington was working on a similar pernicious plot against Syria more than 10 years ago.

The Russians fell for the NATO charade on Libya, with the much-vaunted “no-fly zone” and “responsibility to protect” turning into a murderous blitzkrieg to topple Muammar Gaddafi.

But Moscow seems now to have rumbled NATO’s rolling plan across the Middle East. Russia knows that this regime change is predicated on permanent war that won’t stop at Syria. It is an agenda for total domination across the oil- and gas-rich region that is also targeting Moscow’s other ally, Iran, and will eventually target Russia itself.

At the G8 meeting, British Prime Minister David Cameron did his best to sound consensual. “We have overcome our fundamental differences,” he said with fake tones of fraternity. Cameron was probably still wincing from the rhetorical slap in the face he received from Putin before the G8 summit began, when the Russian leader effectively accused Britain at a press conference in Downing Street of wanting to support organ-eaters and cannibals in Syria.

The G8 summit ended this week with a vaguely stated commitment to end the violence in Syria. That commitment is not worth the paper that it is written on given the underlying criminal intent of Washington, London and Paris. But, importantly, the final G8 communiqué had the glaring omission of calling for President Assad’s ouster. Officially, at least, that American, British and French demand has been given short shrift under G8 terms.

The Western regime-change plan in Syria - already suffering major military defeats on the ground - just received another blow from President Putin who defiantly resisted NATO pressure for betrayal.

Putin stood up to the NATO bullies, showed them to be non-entities, and he drew his own red line on Syria. His courage on display in Northern Ireland this week may just be enough to avert the all-out war that the Western imperialist states have been recklessly driving towards.