The United Nations Security Council is expected to authorize deploying a full mission of 250 monitors to Syria after it takes up the issue Wednesday, but Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon questioned whether even that number would be sufficient.
“I think this is not enough, considering the current situation and considering the vastness of the country, and that is why we need very efficient mobility of our observer mission,” he said Tuesday.
He said he had discussed with European Union leaders whether the EU could provide helicopters and airplanes for that mobility.
This can not be a request for civilian helicopters as those could be rented by the UN itself. So those helicopters Ban Ki-moon is dreaming of would be military helicopters from EU countries with military pilots and NATO standard encrypted radios. The same EU countries that have put sanctions on Syria because it cracks down on an foreign paid insurgency.
This at the same times as the U.S. has pledged “communication equipment” to the insurgents in Syria. The helicopter pilots could thereby direct the insurgents around military concentrations and roadblocks towards their targets.
The Syrian government would be crazy to agree to such a scheme of transport of UN monitors. Indeed it offered its own helicopters for the monitors to use. Ban Ki-moon certainly knew that the EU helicopter scheme would be rejected when he came out with it.
This crazy idea was only offered to let it look as if the Syrian government rejects the Annan plan and hindering the monitor deployment. But for now it seems to me that the UN is the one that holding back progress. There are still only six UN monitors on the ground where thirty were supposed to be since Monday. What is up with that Mr. Ban Ki-moon?
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