Hot Off the Press: Britain Sold Nerve Gas Chemicals to Syria
SYRIA IN CONTEXT, 2 Sep 2013
Gilad Atzmon – TRANSCEND Media Service
If you want to know why PM Cameron was keen to launch an immediate attack on Syria while the UN mission was still collecting evidence on the ground, but then was very quick to scrap the idea all together, dailyrecord.co.uk provides the answer. Britain and Cameron’s government may as well be complicit in the unfolding tragedy.
Seemingly, British firms sold Syrian companies the chemical components needed for the production of chemical weapons, long after the beginning of the civil war.
“BRITAIN allowed firms to sell chemicals to Syria capable of being used to make nerve gas”
“Export licences for potassium fluoride and sodium fluoride were granted months after the bloody civil war in the Middle East began.”
According to the Daily Record, “the chemical export licences were granted by Business Secretary Vince Cable’s Department for Business, Innovation and Skills last January – 10 months after the Syrian uprising began. They were only revoked six months later, when the European Union imposed tough sanctions on Assad’s regime.” However, it is far from being clear yet who is responsible for the attack. There is clear evidence that Rebel forces also possessed chemical weapons. One of the possible explanations for the recent tragedy is that Syrian artillery shells hit rebels’ WMD storage and it was the explosion that spread the lethal substance that killed so many innocents.
“Yesterday, politicians and anti-arms trade campaigners urged Prime Minister David Cameron to explain why the licences were granted.”
Dunfermline and West Fife Labour MP Thomas Docherty, who sits on the House of Commons’ Committees on Arms Export Controls, wrote to Cable:
“MPs will be horrified and furious that the UK Government has been allowing the sale of these ingredients to Syria.
“What the hell were they doing granting a licence in the first place?
“I would like to know what investigations have been carried out to establish if any of this
material exported to Syria was subsequently used in the attacks on its own people.”
The SNP’s leader at Westminster, Angus Robertson, MP, said: “Approving the sale of chemicals which can be converted into lethal weapons during a civil war is a very serious issue.
“We need to know who these chemicals were sold to, why they were sold, and whether the UK Government were aware that the chemicals could potentially be used for chemical weapons.
“The on-going humanitarian crisis in Syria makes a full explanation around these shady deals even more important.”
Today, I don’t feel so patriotic.
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Gilad Atzmon is a public opponent of Israel. Born into a pro-Zionist family and serving in the first Lebanon War, he had a dramatic turnaround. He quit the army, picked up his sax and exiled himself to London. Atzmon writes on political matters, social issues, Jewish identity and culture. His papers are published around the world: TRANSCEND Media Service, World News, The Guardian, Rebelion, The Daily Telegraph, Uprooted Palestinians, Veterans Today, Palestine Telegraph, Counterpunch, Dissident Voice, Aljazeera Magazine, Information Clearing House, Middle-East-Online, Palestine Chronicle, The People Voice, Redress, Shoa (The Palestinian Holocaust) and many more.
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