Syrian Arab News Agency S A N A
Baku, SANA- Foreign and Expatriates Minister, Faysal Mikdad, said that terrorism, external aggression and economic terrorism represented by imposing unilateral coercive measures are the most serious challenges facing the countries of the Non-Aligned Movement, stressing the need for cooperation and solidarity among the countries of the movement to address these challenges.
“Our meeting takes place today at a time when our world is witnessing major challenges represented by the open support of some countries for terrorism and the return to the atmospheres of the Cold War and the threat to use force to solve international problems,” Mikdad added in a speech during the mid-term ministerial conference of the Non-Aligned Movement held via video conference in the Azeri capital, Baku.
The Minister indicated that terrorism still represents the most serious challenges that the Non-Aligned Movement must confront, considering that this scourge constitutes one of the most important threats to international peace and security, in addition to the challenge represented by economic terrorism which imposes unilateral coercive measures to stifle the peoples of the movement’s countries and undermine their national options.
He went on to say that during the past ten years, Syria has been subjected to the most violent and heinous terrorist war imposed on it by countries that used terrorist organizations and various entities associated with them and foreign terrorists from more than one hundred countries as a tool to implement their subversive policies and achieve their geopolitical agendas at the expense of the security and stability of Syria and countries of the region.
Mikdad pointed out that the illegal coercive measures imposed by the US and the European Union on the Syrian people have caused big suffering to them and left catastrophic effects on aspects of their daily life, as well as limited the ability of state institutions to provide services and basic needs for them, adding that this requires from the member states of the Movement to cooperate and remove these measures.
He clarified that the Israeli occupation of the Arab lands in Syria, Lebanon and Palestine has continued since 1967 and the repeated Israeli attacks on the Palestinian people and on the sovereignty and independence of Syria and Lebanon continue, stressing Syria’s refusal of changing the legal, geographical and political status of the occupied Syrian Golan and its determination to end any illegitimate foreign military presence on its lands.
Mikdad reiterated Syria’s firm and principled stance in support of the Palestinian cause and the right of the Palestinian people in self-determination and the establishment of their independent state with Jerusalem as its capital.
Bushra Dabin/ Mazen Eyon