Syria Envoy Bouthaina Shaaban Praises China Ahead of Talks in Beijing

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A Syrian envoy in Beijing for talks with Chinese officials has praised her host's attitude to her country, contrasting it with that of Western powers, in comments published Thursday.

China has joined Russia to repeatedly use their vetoes to scuttle U.N. Security Council resolutions aimed at tackling the conflict in Syria, putting them at loggerheads with fellow permanent members the United States, Britain and France.

"We're happy to see countries like China and Russia, who are not colonizers or deal with people like colonizers," said Bouthaina Shaaban, special advisor to Syrian President Bashar Assad, in an interview.

"This is a very different stance from the West," she told the state-run China Daily newspaper ahead of a meeting with China's Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi later Thursday.

The People's Daily, mouthpiece of the governing Communist party, said Wednesday that China would press for a "political solution" to the crisis in Syria during Shaaban's visit, few details of which have been released.

The United States has urged Beijing to use its influence on the embattled regime in Damascus to press for an end to the bloodshed, with the 17-month conflict showing no signs of abating.

Western nations have sought U.N. sanctions to pressure Syria to implement a six-point peace plan drafted by U.N.-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan, who resigned earlier this month in the face of continued violence and a deadlock among world powers.

But Beijing, which has said it would also be open to meeting Syria's opposition, is deeply uncomfortable with what it sees as Western intervention in other countries' internal affairs.

In the interview, Shaaban, who arrived on Tuesday, slammed Western nations for supplying arms and money to "people who are inciting the civil war in Syria" and imposing sanctions that hurt the health sector and civilians.

She also dismissed the opposition as armed groups, kidnappers and stooges of foreign powers that refused to engage in dialogue with the government.

And she denied that Syria was blocking international aid groups from entering the country, saying instead they had not offered any supplies despite requests from the government.

Comments 2
Thumb shab 16 August 2012, 09:24

Old retorics from the cold war. Boring.

Missing leb4ever 16 August 2012, 19:18

FT - so just because you have a female speaker in a country it's automoatically a democracy despite all the atrocities this regime is committing, pretty shallow minded statement if you ask me.