Airstrikes against hospitals in Syria are war crimes that make the resumption of peace talks in the country’s civil war impossible, Britain’s Foreign Minister Boris Johnson said on Sunday (October 2).
Johnson criticised Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Russia for hitting civilian targets as he highlighted the tragic consequences of the Syrian crisis on the spiralling numbers of refugees.
“it is the continuous savagery of the Assad regime against the people of Aleppo and the complicity of the Russians in committing what are patently war crimes – bombing hospitals, when they know they are hospitals and nothing but hospitals. That is making it impossible for peace negotiations to resume,” he told the Conservative Party’s annual conference in Birmingham.
Since a ceasefire collapsed last month, the Syrian military, supported by Iranian-backed militias and Russian air power, began a push to take the whole of the divided city of Aleppo, in a dramatic assault which has nearly destroyed eastern Aleppo’s healthcare system, the United Nations said.
The foreign minister went on to express his worries about the spread of Islamic State and terrorism threats to European cities.
“If that threat to travel continues to have a palpable chilling effect on tourism, perhaps even on trade, then for a great trading nation like Britain that is a matter of deep concern,” he said.
Turning his focus onto the imminent British divorce from the EU, Johnson, one of the lead campaigner for Brexit, branded the result of the June vote as a newly-found economic and political freedom.
“I have just to tell any lingering gloomadon poppers that never once, never once, have I felt in all my conversations in the European Council that this country will be in any way disadvantaged by extricating ourselves from the EU treaties. On the contrary I think there are many ways in which we will be liberated,” he told the cheering crowd.
Despite the upcoming separation from the EU, Britain will remain committed to inter-governmental European cooperation on matters such as Russian sanctions and immigrants search and rescue operations in the Mediterranean, Johnson said.
(c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2016
