Germany, US agree need to prevent chemical weapons attacks in Syria

attacks in Syria

Germany also pledged to more strongly support Washington’s efforts in Syria, including through humanitarian aid

Maas said Germany and the US likewise agreed on the need to curb Iran’s activities in the region and its ballistic missile program

Updated 04 October 2018

October 04, 2018 02:19

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WASHINGTON: Germany and the United States agree on the need to do everything possible to prevent the use of chemical weapons in Syria, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said on Wednesday after meeting US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

Maas said the meeting included intense discussions about the situation in Syria, with both sides keen to increase the pressure for a political solution, and wanted to work start as soon as possible on rewriting the Syrian constitution.

Germany also pledged to more strongly support Washington’s efforts in Syria, including through humanitarian aid, and in ensuring that chemical weapons were not used there, Maas told reporters after the meeting.

“We discussed how we can more strongly support the United States in their engagement in Syria. We now will concretize and operationalize that,” he said.

He said Pompeo understood the political debate in Germany about possible participation in any US-led retaliatory military strike in the event of a chemical weapons attack, and that parliament was unlikely to approve such a move.

“There are different ways to participate to help ensure that chemical weapons are not used there and that none are even present,” Maas said, citing Germany’s expertise in disposing of such weapons.

A US diplomat last week told Reuters that Washington will pursue “a strategy of isolation,” including sanctions, with its allies if President Bashar Assad holds up a political process aimed at ending Syria’s seven-year war.

Nine rounds of UN-led peace talks, most of them in Geneva, have failed to bring the warring sides together to end the conflict that has killed hundreds of thousands of people and driven millions from their homes.

Maas said Germany and the United States agreed on the need to curb Iran’s activities in the region and its ballistic missle program, but remained at odds about Washington’s decision to withdraw from the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement.

“We want to preserve the nuclear agreement with Iran because ... everything else will not lead to improvement, and the situation could possibly get worse and escalate,” Maas said. “No one can have an interest in that.

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Bond, James • 2 days ago

Pompeo is a hypocrite, like his masters he is a true terrorist.

US has lost in Syria and must leave Syrian territory or be buried

in Syria. "We will bury you", applies even today.

Muslim World League head urges faith leaders to travel to Jerusalem seeking peace

he crisis cannot be tackled except y great influential men powered ith logical wisdom and justice, said ohammed Al-Issa Secretary-eneral, MWL.

The call was made at the opening of the second Conference on Cultural Rapprochement between the US and the Muslim World in New York on Oct. 4

The peace initiative by the head of the Makkah-based MWL followed calls for peace by Jewish and Christian American religious leaders

Updated 06 October 2018

DAOUD KUTTAB

October 06, 2018 01:49

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AMMAN: In an unprecedented move, Sheikh Mohammed Al-Issa, secretary-general of the Muslim World League (MWL), has called on faith leaders to travel to Jerusalem by launching a “peace caravan” made up of religious messengers who are independent of any political affiliation.

The call was made at the opening of the second Conference on Cultural Rapprochement between the US and the Muslim World in New York on Oct. 4.

“This convoy should represent the three religions to visit all the holy places in Jerusalem. The crisis cannot be tackled except by great influential men powered with logical wisdom and justice,” Al-Issa said to some 400 US, Jewish, Christian and Muslim leaders and thinkers.

The peace initiative by the head of the Makkah-based MWL followed calls for peace by Jewish and Christian American religious leaders.

Charles Small, president of the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy, said the greatest victim of antisemitism in America today are Muslims. Quoting the Jewish writer and Holocaust survival the late Elie Wiesel, Small said that “while antisemitism begins with Jews it doesn’t end with Jews.”

Shawki Allam, the grand mufti of Egypt, focused on the need for a positive intervention, saying that he hopes to make a “positive contribution in the effort to place the foundation of a holistic approach to dialogue.”

The president of the Emirates Fatwa Council, Abdallah bin Bayyah, spoke about religion’s approach to tolerating the other. “We want all religions, and their adherents, to move from simple acknowledgment of the other to the Qur’anic calling of coming to know one another.”

It is noteworthy that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has regularly called on Muslims and Arabs who can visit Jerusalem to do so saying that visiting a prisoner is not legitimizing the jailers, a reference to the suggestion that such a visit represents normalization with Israel.

Al-Issa tackled the label of extremism in his closing speech on the conference’s first day. “Great religions are not extreme by nature; and at the same time, there is no religion that is free of extremists who believe that they solely are privileged with the absolute truth.”