US upping the ante in Syria, may stoke broader conflict: Analyst

Press TV has interviewed Ken Stone, a member of the Hamilton Coalition to Stop the War, to discuss the secret visit by General Joseph Votel, the head of US Central Command (CENTCOM), to northern Syria.

Read a rough transcription of the interview below.

Press TV: First off, let’s imagine things from the Syrian and the government’s perspective. You have the most senior American commander on your soil from a hostile nation and without any permission whatsoever. In terms of international law and regulations, what does that constitute?

Stone: The visit of General Votel to Syria is a very dramatic and dangerous development. It is a gross violation of international law. The United States routinely ignores the sovereignty and territorial integrity of other countries, many countries, but in relation to Syria, WikiLeaks documents show that the US was planning regime change in Syria actively since 2006; and since the so-called Arab Spring of 2011, the US with the help of Canada, Britain, France, other NATO countries and Arab monarchies has been organizing a covert war of aggression using foreign-backed terrorist mercenaries to try and dismember Syria and to divide it along ethnic and religious lines.

So this is the root of the problem, that the United States does not respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of other countries. So when they are sending a top US general into Syria without permission, this is another indication of their lack of respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity.

I was in Syria one month ago to observe the parliamentary elections on April 13. I spoke to a lot of Syrians at the polling stations in Damascus and on the street and they made it very clear to me that... Syrians intend to retain the right to determine the future of their country and to elect the person or government that leads that country. It is not up to the United States to determine who runs Syria or what will be done with Syria.

Press TV: Building on that, what kind of a message do you think this recent action, the most senior American general entering the Syrian territory without permission, what kind of a message is it going to send both to the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad, to the Russians in particular as well as the terrorists and well beyond, to the whole world?  

Stone: I believe that the US intended... they wanted purposely that this so-called secret meeting would be known to the entire world. It is a purposeful provocation, in my opinion, and the message is that the USA is not giving up on John Kerry’s Plan B to partition Syria, despite the fact that the US was involved in the UN-sponsored peace talks, which created a partial ceasefire several months ago, despite the fact that the US voted at the Security Council on Resolution 2254 for a political solution, a road-map towards peace in Syria. The US, as native people in the US [have] commonly said for the last several hundred years, speaks with forked tongue, you cannot trust them, they play a double game.

The message here is that the US is still in favor of regime change in Syria and that they plan to dismember Syria along religious and ethnic lines as they have done in Yugoslavia and Iraq and they might even turn it into a failed state as they did in Libya. It is a war crime.

Press TV: And your opinion, your analysis given the fact that this entry of this senior American general comes just one day after the Russian defense minister announces that because of the American rejection of any coordination or cooperation in terms of degrading and defeating the terrorists on the ground, Russia and Moscow will reserve the unilateral right to strike at those terrorists as of May 25. Any significance there in your idea?

Stone: Yes, the significance is this: We have to remember that the Russians, the Iranians and Hezbollah are in Syria with the permission of the Syrian government. Syria is a sovereign state, it has allies and it can invite its allies in to help it restore its national sovereignty and territorial integrity. The United States does not have this right, it does not belong in Syria and neither does its coalition, which unfortunately includes Canada. What is really significant for the world here and for the Russians is the Americans are upping the ante; they are raising the stakes in what is already a very serious and troubling game.

We have here two super powers at loggerheads; and what the visit of General Votel indicates is that the American administration is raising the level of escalation, the level of tensions which could easily spread into a regional war or, God forbid, even into a world war.

So, people in the peace movement, the anti-war movement around the world should see this as an alarm going off, that here we have a situation where the United States, contrary to international law, contrary to agreements and resolutions that it has signed, is looking to provoke a further conflict, to prolong the conflict, to increase the conflict. It is a very dangerous situation indeed.

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