Europe to End Arms Embargo on Syria + Wars Spreads in Lebanon

This morning Steven Erlanger has a good summary, "Europe Seeks to Press Russia and Syria on Arms," of the ongoing diplomatic struggles in the Syrian civil war. Earlier in the week, the EU, due to British and French insistence, lifted the arms embargo on Syria:

Britain and France were the prime movers in strong-arming other European Union countries to let the arms embargo on Syria lapse, while other of the union’s sanctions, aimed more specifically at the Assad government, were renewed. 

Part of the debate in a long meeting was to promise that neither Britain nor France would begin to deliver any arms, if they chose to do so, until the beginning of August, to allow the Geneva peace process to get traction, the officials explained.

The lifting of the arms embargo is widely interpreted as a Western ploy to gain leverage prior to the peace conference being planned to take place in Geneva in June. As Colum Lynch points out in his Turtle Bay blog that appears on Foreign Policy's web site:

But the decision to end the embargo in two months hasn't resulted in any immediate calls or plans for arming the opposition. Instead, Russia cited the decision today in defending its own move to deliver S-300 air defense missiles, claiming it would deter foreign intervention. "We consider that such steps will restrain some hotheads from the possibility of giving this conflict, or from considering a scenario that would give this conflict, an international character with the participation of external forces," Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told reporters, according to Interfax news agency. 

Jean Marie Guéhenno, a former French official and under secretary-general for peacekeeping who served as a top advisor to former U.N.-Arab League Syria envoy Kofi Annan, said that the decision to block the maintenance of the European arms embargo has merely provided political cover to Russia and other regime supporters to continue its arms sales. Meanwhile, there's little fresh hope that Western powers will enter the conflict on behalf of the rebels. 

"I think it backfired and exposed the weakness of the West, in general," Guéhenno told Turtle Bay. "This issue of arming or not arming is more a bluff than anything else. It's more about doing something to show you're doing something than actually doing something. It will be seen by the Russians, who are not fools, as a sign of weakness rather than strength."

The Israelis are making thinly-veiled threats of additional bombing runs should Russia make delivery of the S-300s.

Meanwhile on the ground the war spreads. There were more rockets launched on Tuesday against the pro-Hezbollah village of Hermel on the Lebanese border. The source of the rockets was likely the Lebanese town of Arsal, which is mainly Sunni. Arsal was also the source of a border checkpoint attack that left three Lebanese soldiers dead. This from today's story, "Rocket and Gun Attacks Add to Fears That Syria’s Strife Is Reaching Lebanon," by Anne Barnard and Hania Mourtada:

Arsal, which is near a porous border that has been used as a conduit for weapons, has in recent months become a hub for Syrian rebels and their supporters, as well as a temporary home for thousands of Syrian refugees. The clash Tuesday was the second in the area this year. In February, gunmen ambushed a Lebanese Army convoy near the town, killing a captain and a sergeant.

General Salim Idris, the head of the West's confected Free Syrian Army, threatened Lebanese president Michel Suleiman with more attacks inside his country if Hezbollah was not prevented from crossing into Syria. This wanton, profligate bellicosity -- you're either with us or against us -- is thoroughly Western. There should be no doubt, and I don't think there is among those who are paying attention, who is responsible for the increase in suffering as the war widens from a civil conflict to a regional conflagration.