THE PRESIDENTS of Venezuela and Guyana have made a significant joint appeal for restraint by the United States of America against a military strike on Syria in response to repeated claims that the government in Damascus had used sarin gas in a chemical weapon attack, killing an estimated 1 429 Syrians, including 426 children.
The plea by the presidents of two border neighbours – Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro and Guyana’s Donald Ramotar – came at the weekend amid disclosure by President Barack Obama that he had opted to secure support from the United States Congress for his decision to militarily punish President Assad’s government for that abominable, inhumane criminal act.
Both Venezuela and Guyana are members of the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) and Presidents Maduro and Ramotar chose the opportunity of an earlier scheduled meeting to go public with their sober call for restraint against threatened military attack against Syria.
Cynics may well question the value of such a limited appeal, at the time of writing, from within this hemisphere. But Presidents Maduro and Ramotar have at least demonstrated that in the face of imminent international crisis, silence is not an option for governments and states committed to the rule of law and international peace.
Further, the United Nations Security Council has not even held a crisis session to consider the findings of its specialist team that went to Syria to investigate the origin and extent of that horrific criminal act.
Not just the American people would recall how former President George W. Bush had rushed into military invasion of Iraq in cooperation with then British Prime Minister Tony Blair and many member states of the United Nations.
Ideally, it would be good to discover that there are other UNASUR colleagues of the Venezuelan and Guyanese heads of state who share their plea for restraint to prevent a repetition of the Iraq nightmare when the UN was deliberately ignored.
For his part, President Obama, who had condemned President Bush for failing to consult the United States Congress and also ignoring the United Nations, is now quite aware of the unexpected ignominy suffered by Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron last week when the House of Commons denied him an endorsement to pursue military action against Syria.
Let it also be noted that once again, on a very major political issue of global interest, there is neither a brief collective response from the foreign ministers of our Caribbean Community CARICOM) nor the Heads of Government. Surely CARICOM governments cannot be that overwhelmed by their respective domestic problems and challenges to at least offer a brief collective response to the looming crisis of a United States-led military strike against Syria.