Global Research

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Interview with Professor Michel Chossudovsky,
Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

Excerpt from 30 minutes program Press TV program

“Kofi Annan is not a peacemaker, Kofi Annan is a war-maker. He has stated his position on numerous occasions, calling for the collaboration of the United Nations with NATO.”

Syria says that the terrorist activities of the armed groups in the country have increased despite a peace plan proposed by the UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan.

Press TV has interviewed Professor Michel Chossudovsky, the director of the Centre for  Research on Globalization in Montreal, who talks about the role of Annan as a “peacemaker” in Syria, the support the opposition receives from foreigners and the root of the country’s one-year old unrest.

The following is a transcript of the interview.

Press TV: UN Arab League special envoy Kofi Annan couldn’t be clearer in his message yesterday, violence and deaths needs to stop. Who is preventing that, right now, from happening?

Chossudovsky: Well I think that the Kofi Annan peace proposal is flawed from the outset, because it does not clearly identify the sides involved in the ceasefire.

Well, in fact it identifies the government on the one hand and the so-called opposition on the other hand, but the fact of the matter is that there are now NATO Special Forces, Special Forces from NATO countries, not to mention Qatari Special Forces and intelligence operatives, which are collaborating with the so-called Free Syrian Army, in terms of logistics, military advice, the supply of weapons.

And this is in violation of international law, because these are foreign forces on Syrian soil.

The Syrian government has pointed to the role of Qatar and Saudi Arabia, but it has not mentioned the fact that there are British and French Special Forces on the ground, collaborating with the terrorists against government forces.

So you can’t have a ceasefire demanded by members of the international community, namely France and Britain, and have Special Forces from those countries on the ground collaborating with the Free Syrian Army.

I should mention another issue; it is now clearly documented, even in Western media sources, that the Free Syria Army is integrated by death squads, which are involved in extrajudicial assassinations of people in the various communities.

This was documented with regards to Homs, we’re talking about assassinations, and we’re talking about ethnic cleansing directed against the Christian community in particular.

Crimes against humanity are being committed by foreign forces, which have integrated the Free Syrian Army; they are complicit in these war crimes.

Press TV: Let’s focus on the role of the media, in which several producers and reporters of the Qatari government-funded TV channel Al Jazeera have designed over the role the news network is playing in fanning the flames of war in Syria? It does sound like the truth is being skewed, doesn’t it?

Chossudovsky: Well this is of course not an isolated phenomenon, Al Jazeera.

We are bombarded with media lies on a daily basis. You know, as an organization committed to truth in media, our research center is confronted with that on a daily basis.

When I started my investigation on Syria – it was in fact shortly after I left the country in March of last year – the first reports were totally fabricated, and we had to find documentary evidence occasionally within the Lebanese and Israeli press, which confirmed unequivocally that there were terrorist acts right from the beginning, acts of arson, assassinations of civilians, well-organized brigades.

And at that time, the media consensus was to say that this was a peaceful protest movement. And that consensus actually prevailed for quite a while.

People were being killed by terrorists, and the media all over the world  –and I listen to the Canadian media, the US media, the European media– they were lying through their teeth, they were telling us that this was a peaceful protest movement, when in fact the so-called opposition were there with machine guns.

And then they would twist realities upside down, and say ‘no these people who are killing are government forces, they’re snipers,’ when in fact they were terrorists.

So that it was an utter string of lies and manipulation of images. They used the pro-government rallies in favor of President Bashar al-Assad, to illustrate the resentment … opposition, which was supposed to take place. 

When it all started in Dara’a, which is a small border city, right on the border with Jordan, 45,000 inhabitants, there was no protest movement, there was no mass movement. This was the initial process of bringing in the terrorists, and they were there right from the beginning, attacking government buildings, killing the police and the armed forces, but also killing civilians.

And then, what we have is this very gruesome media, you know, media ritual of actually acknowledging the deaths of civilians, and then using those deaths of civilians by the so-called opposition forces and then blaming the government.

So that is really the whole basis of this responsibility to protect, you go in with killer brigades, death squads, you kill people, and then after that you blame the government.

That is not to say that the government doesn’t bare some responsibility in the way it has handled this crisis. But right from the beginning, it was presented as a protest movement, when in fact it was an insurrection.

Press TV: April 12, 6 am, Damascus time! A new page in Syria’s history, do you think, towards political resolve, or a continuation of violence?

Chossudovsky: Well let me simply go back to the issue of Kofi Annan, which is very important.

Kofi Annan is not a peacemaker, Kofi Annan is a war-maker. He has stated his position on numerous occasions that is the collaboration of the United Nations with NATO.

And that goes back to 1999, to the Kosovo War, how, you know, Kofi Annan… Kofi Annan was undersecretary for the United Nations peacekeeping. He was then appointed secretary general, and he was appointed by the United States, after they got rid of the previous secretary general of the United Nations.

So we have to understand that Kofi Annan is also one of the main architects of ‘responsibility to protect,’ which was endorsed by the United Nations. So, there we have a situation where the United Nations is complicit in the so-called humanitarian intervention…