UAE condemns lack of action on Syria

The UAE expressed its frustration with the refusal of the international community to help the people of Syria, when Shaikh Abdullah Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the UAE Foreign Minister, told the United Nations General Assembly that “the UAE is deeply disappointed at the inability of the international community to put an immediate end to the worsening tragedy suffered by the Syrian people”. He reminded the world community that it should not ignore the suffering caused by indiscriminate and systematic bombings by Bashar Al Assad’s forces that have killed more than 100,000 people so far and injured and displaced millions. In addition, Shaikh Abdullah naturally condemned Al Assad’s use of chemical weapons, but he remained determined that the answer in Syria is to address the whole issue of the war and seek a solution. He reiterated the UAE’s call for the international community to take all necessary measures to punish the Syrian regime for its massacres of civilians, with a bitter attack on how the majority of Arab states are angry at the disabling of the UN mechanisms to act against the aggressive actions of the Syrian regime against its people.

Turning to Egypt, Shaikh Abdullah told the UN General Assembly that the UAE supported the country’s second wave of revolution in June this year on the basis that “tens of millions of Egyptian people expressed their determined will to draw up a roadmap that shapes a better future for their country and lays an inclusive democratic path based on the participation of all spectrums of society, without exclusion, and within a policy characterised by moderation, non-violence and non-use of religion as a means of exclusion and classification or breaching sectarianism and hatred”.

Shaikh Abdullah put both these urgent issues in the context of the over-arching UAE policy to support human development through tolerance and moderation, free of any incitement to hatred and ready to support dialogue among different cultures and religions without arrogance or superiority.