Russia will not cave in to US over Syria: Dr. Webster Tarpley

Wednesday 16 January 2013

Russia will not cave in to US over Syria: Dr. Webster Tarpley

Sun Jan 13, 2013 1:15PM

Interview with Dr. Webster Griffin Tarpley

Russia has been hanging tough. We just had the meeting of Brahimi the UN mediator with [Russian Deputy foreign minister Mikhail] Bogdanov of the Russian foreign ministry and [US Undersecretary of State William] Burns of the US state department and Russia did not cave in; the US was pressing to get the departure of Assad as a precondition to anything else and that has been rejected so the big push to try to break the will of Russia has failed and that’s a plus.”

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An analyst says the fact that Russia has stood firmly against the US drive to remove Syrian President Bashar al-Assad from power has made Washington unable in imposing its will regarding the issue.

The comment comes as Moscow’s call for taking into account Assad’s three-step plan comes in the face of opposition from the United States and Britain, who dismissed the initiative and insisted that Assad should stand down.

On Friday, UN-Arab League Special Envoy to Syria Lakhdar Brahimi wrapped up talks in Geneva with US and Russian representatives, during which he again rejected all calls for a military solution to the Syria crisis.

“We stressed again that in our view, there was no military solution to this conflict,” Brahimi said on Friday after meetings with US Deputy Secretary of State William Burns and Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov at the United Nations European headquarters.

Press TV has conducted an interview with author and historian Webster Griffin Tarpley from Washington to further discuss the issue.

What follows is an approximate transcription of the interview.

Press TV: Dr. it seems that the war on Syria is being discussed more openly as it was with Qatar, Israel literally speaking of waging an all out war. Why not respect and give dialogue a chance?

Tarpley: Well, of course you’re dealing with a planned destabilization and the plan is to destroy Syria. This proposal comes from the Thani family, the rulers of Qatar; they are of course an oppressive dynasty of absolute monarchs that’s in emirate after all.

If any place in the Middle East needs a revolution its Qatar and of course what he’s proposing is that other people will go and get killed because Qatar does not have any forces that could carry this out and when he says Arabs this is also somewhat puzzling because he is really talking about Turkey I’m afraid which would mean that it wouldn’t be Arabs though it is a massive double plot interception.

I think he’s responding to two things: first of all Russia. Russia has been hanging tough. We just had the meeting of Brahimi the UN mediator with [Russian Deputy foreign minister Mikhail] Bogdanov of the Russian foreign ministry and [US Undersecretary of State William] Burns of the US state department and Russia did not cave in; the US was pressing to get the departure of Assad as a precondition to anything else and that has been rejected so the big push to try to break the will of Russia has failed and that’s a plus.

Brahimi of course also condemned by Syria as being flagrantly biased. That would be useful if Russia would come out and say that Brahimi is flagrantly biased. Now on the ground though what you are hearing about here is that rebels have taken the Taftanaz military airport in the North.

The terrorist al-Nusra, al-Qaeda, the al-Qaeda army has seized this military airport but less attention is going to a more important engagement than I can see which is that the Syrian Arab army has retaken Daraya which is the key to a larger and more important military base in the outskirts of Damascus which is very close to the government ministry and the presidential palace.

So if it’s an exchange of military bases the Syrian army has definitely won this and we are also getting reports that there was a large concentration of mass al-Nusra terrorists in Daraya and that they may have fared very poorly in the last days of the engagement. That also raises the question how long can these terrorists go on?

That is they’re drawing on a finite pool, the attrition rates among the terrorists are very high. We’re told that Tunisians are now being brought in massively but at a certain point they’re going to run out of terrorists and at that point they’d be begging; they’d be in big trouble.

Press TV: Of course you spoke of Turkey as well. Just how has Turkey summed up the costs and benefits of its benefits of its involvement in this scenario?

Tarpley: They’re far beyond any irrational calculation I tried to stress. It all started with Obama on the phone whispering sweet nothings into the ear of Erdogan and now Erdogan has bet his entire prestige and I’m afraid [Turkish] foreign minister Davutoglu also. So they’ve made this commitment and they feel that if they can’t go all the way that that will be a fatal blow to their political prospects which it may well be.

As we are fighting here in the United States with Afghanistan getting out of this engagement is the hardest part and that is when the danger to the country that’s been attacking is the greatest so Erdogan was learning that painful lesson but nevertheless sane forces in Turkey should say stop this now this is bad for Turkey.

VG/JR