The EU failed to strike a deal on extending the Arms Embargo on Syrian Rebels, meaning that the ban effectively expires at week’s end.  The UK and France have been chomping at the bit to get weapons into the hands of forces opposed to Bashar al-Assad.

(More on the EU here)

British Foreign Secretary William Hague said, “This was the outcome that the United Kingdom wanted.  It was a difficult decision for some countries, but it was necessary and right to reinforce international efforts to reach a diplomatic solution to the conflict in Syria,” adding that Britain had no immediate plans to send arms to Syria.

Austria, Sweden, Finland and the Czech Republic are against deeper involvement with the rebels, saying relaxing the arms embargo would only lead to more violence.

But France and the UK seemed to be already on course, and were waving the latest reports of atrocities as their justification.  The French newspaper “Le Monde” on Monday published first-hand accounts of chemical weapons attacks on Syrian rebels fighting President Bashar al-Assad. 

According to LeMonde:

“Soon they experience difficulty breathing, sometimes in the extreme; they begin to vomit or lose consciousness. The fighters worst affected need to be evacuated before they suffocate.

“In two months spent reporting on the outskirts of the Syrian capital, we encountered similar cases across a much larger region. Their gravity, their increasing frequency and the tactic of using such arms shows that what is being released is not just tear gas, which is used on all fronts, but products of a different class that are far more toxic.”

Earlier this month, United Nations war crimes investigator Carla Del Ponte said her team had gathered evidence indicating that rebel forces had used the banned nerve agent sarin. Western governments have said they have no such evidence.

Add that to reports that Syrian rebel factions are allied with al Qaeda, and you’d have to wonder why anyone would want to involve their country in what’s shaping up to be a proxy war of geopolitical interests.  Russia, Iran, and Iran’s fellows in the Shia Islamist militant group Hezbollah back Syria’s Bashar al-Assad.  The US and western European powers back the rebels, as do Sunni Muslims such as Saudi Arabia and al Qaeda-linked groups.

Various sources say from 75,000 to 95,000 people have been killed in the Syrian Civil War, now in its third year.