Syria denounces that the sanctions of the United States and other Western countries prevent the arrival of aid
8 (EUROPA PRESS)
The Secretary of State of the United States, Antony Blinken, has stressed that he is working with his partners to provide humanitarian aid to those affected in Syria by the earthquakes in Turkey on Monday, although he has guaranteed that it “will not reach the regime” of the president. , Bashar al Assad, with whom Washington refuses to work and against whom it has imposed several batteries of sanctions.
“In Syria we have US-funded humanitarian partners who are coordinating vital assistance and we are committed to providing that assistance to help the people of Syria recover from this disaster, just as we have been the largest humanitarian donor since the start of the war in Syria. “, he said, before insisting that “those funds will of course go to the Syrian people, not to the regime.”
Blinken stressed that “this will not change” and added that the US authorities “are able to work through humanitarian partners on the ground in Syria” after the “horrible earthquake in Turkey and Syria”. “We have seen truly devastating images from Turkey and Syria. We have seen collapsed buildings. We see children rescued from the rubble. Thank God there are still people rescued from the rubble,” he said.
“The United States government is working at full speed,” he defended, while noting that Washington “has deployed more than 150 members of search and rescue teams in Turkey.” “We have US helicopters that are supporting Turkish response efforts in hard-to-reach areas,” Blinken stressed, pointing out that Washington “does everything possible to help people in need.”
In this sense, he has advanced that the United States “will have more to say in the coming days, while the efforts continue”, with a view to a possible expansion of the response. “It is very important to say how focused we are on this, how much the people of Turkey and Syria are in our thoughts and the many efforts underway to try to help those in need,” he concluded.
The delivery of humanitarian aid to the victims is being damaged by the sanctions against Damascus and the rupture of relations of many countries with Al Assad after the outbreak of the war in 2011 due to the repression of the pro-democratic demonstrations in line with the ‘ Arab Spring’. In addition, there is only one open border crossing between the area controlled by the rebels and Turkey, precisely in the area affected by the earthquakes.
In this sense, the Syrian Foreign Minister, Faisal Mikdad, denounced on Tuesday that the sanctions imposed by the United States and other Western countries are preventing the arrival of aid to Damascus to deal with the “great disaster” caused by the earthquake, while which stressed that International Law prohibits humanitarian aid from being affected by sanctions.
“The sanctions imposed by the United States and Western countries against Syria have exacerbated the disaster,” he said, before dismissing claims from Washington that they do not affect humanitarian aid. Thus, he stressed that Damascus cannot buy medicines and accused the United States of “threatening” its allies to prevent them from delivering aid.
“From the first moment after the devastating earthquake, the Syrian state has mobilized its full potential,” he said during an interview with the Lebanese television channel Al Mayadin, before recalling that the government approved on Monday “a national emergency plan” to deal with the situation, as reported by the Syrian state news agency, SANA.
For this reason, Mikdad called on the member states of the United Nations, its agencies and funds and other non-governmental and humanitarian organizations to “lend a hand and support the Syrian efforts to deal with this humanitarian disaster.” “Many brother and friendly countries have responded to the call and planes with humanitarian aid have arrived at the airports of Damascus, Aleppo and Latakia,” she concluded.
