Syria’s mission to the United Nations has vehemently condemned the economic sanctions targeting the country, saying they blight the lives of ordinary Syrians.
“The unilateral, coercive measures imposed on the Syrian people represent an economic terrorism that are largely affecting the lives of the Syrians and hindering the delivery of their daily basic needs,” the official Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) reported, citing the country’s UN Ambassador Bashar al-Ja’afari as saying on Wednesday.
Ja’afari, who was addressing a UN Security Council session focusing on the situation in the country, said that since foreign-backed militancy broke out in 2011, Damascus “had spared no efforts to fulfill its duty in meeting the humanitarian requirements of the Syrians, who have suffered from this war,” Ja’afari added.
The Syrian government, the envoy said, was prepared to boost its cooperation with the UN and its member states to both improve the humanitarian situation and pave the way for the return of those who had fled war.
The United States and its Western and regional supporters stand accused of supporting the foreign-backed war that has killed hundreds of thousands in the country, but has now been mostly contained thanks to Damascus and its allies’ counter-terrorism efforts.
Washington has, meanwhile, been imposing sanctions on hundreds of companies and individuals, whom it accuses of involvement in developing chemical munitions. Damascus surrendered its stockpile of chemical weapons in a process monitored by the UN and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in 2013, and has repeatedly asserted that it has never deployed such weapons.
The European Union has also slapped Syria with an oil embargo, placed restrictions on certain investments in the country, frozen the assets of the Syrian Central Bank across the bloc, and imposed bans on dozens of companies linked to the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The EU voted last May in favor of extending the bans until June 1, 2019.