US sanctions imposed on Syria should be immediately and unconditionally lifted amid coronavirus crisis: al-Jaafari

Syria’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations Bashar Al-Jaafari has expressed Syria’s call on the United States to immediately and unconditionally lift all the coercive economic measures it has been imposing on Syria so that the country can get the medical materials and equipments necessary for controlling and confronting the spread of coronavirus pandemic.

In a letter to the UN Chief and President of the Security Council, al-Jaafari said that since 1979, the United States has been imposing illegal unilateral coercive economic measures on Syria the repercussions of which have been exacerbated over the past nine years given the fact that the current and previous US administrations have issued eight decisions providing for tightening the economic siege on the Syrian people and imposing new unprecedented punitive measures on the sectors of banking, energy, investment, import, export, communications and transport, thereby depriving the Syrians of their basic rights in life.

  As a result of these illegal measures Syria has been classified among the least developed countries in the “Human Development Report 2016”, al-Jaafari said, adding that these measures have also affected the process of delivering humanitarian aid to those who need, undermined the Syrian people’s ability to get their basic needs and affected the Syrian Government’s ability to provide basic services to citizens, particularly in the sector of energy.

He reiterated that the hostile US policies towards Syria are nothing but a direct and flagrant violation of International law, international Humanitarian law  and the Security Council resolutions on Syria.

He affirmed that the insistence of the United States to continue imposing unilateral coercive economic measures on Syria despite the serious threat posed by the global coronavirus pandemic to all humanity proves that Washington disregards humanitarian values and ignores international calls to join world efforts to combat this pandemic.

The senior Syrian diplomat also called for the withdrawal of the US occupation troops from all the Syrian territories, particularly from the oil and gas fields so that the Syrian Government can establish control over these areas and start rebuilding and rehabilitating the oil and gas stations in these areas so as to use the Syrian resources for the benefit of the Syrian people.

He also called for dismantling and closing all the illegal camps established by the United States and the illegal separatist militia on Syrian lands in a way that guarantees the departure of all foreign terrorists, mainly Deash members, and their families from Syria to their home countries.

Al-Jaafari reiterated that the Syrian government reserves its right to hold the American government and its partners in the US-led coalition responsible for destroying Syrian cities and areas including among others Raqqa, Deir Ezzour, Ain al-Arab, Hajin and for  destroying the Syrian infrastructure, including the roads, bridges, power plants, oil and gas fields and supply routes.

Syria affirms that it has mobilized all of its human, medical and food resources to provide assistance to all citizens wherever they are in the face of the coronavirus threat, stressing that any international efforts to control the spread of this dangerous pandemic can’t succeed if sanctions continue to be imposed by some governments on almost two billion people all over the world, al-Jaafari concluded.

Hamda Mustafa