Britain pushes for no-fly zone on Syria

Syrian shouts slogans during protest against government Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar has revealed that British political and security figures toured Syria’s neighbouring countries to convince them to commit to an international resolution imposing a civil air blockade on Syria. Sources told the newspaper that a British delegate visited Lebanon earlier this month to discuss the possibility of the participation of Lebanon in the plan to be announced early next year, relating to the imposition of a no-fly zone on Syria.
The delegation, which included officers from British intelligence, revealed to officials in Lebanon that this measure represents a step forward in the international sanctions outside the Security Council against Syria. The step aims at accelerating the toppling of the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, in an expected time frame of six months.
According to leaks attributed to members of the British delegation, London is leading the follow-up in putting pressure on the Syrian regime to accelerate overthrowing it. Britain wants to ensure that the implementation of this resolution won’t fail, through the prior consent of Syria’s neighbouring countries that they will abide by it when it comes to light.
Under the resolution the neighbouring countries of Syria will be committed to two things. Firstly, not allowing any aircraft taking off from Damascus airport or landing into it, to cross its territory. This means in practice that these states will close sovereign airspace to civil air traffic to and from Syria. The second thing is the prohibition of Syria\'s neighbouring airports from receiving any aircraft coming from Damascus Airport or any aircraft or landing into it, either in direct or indirect flights. The navigation authorities in the neighbouring countries of Syria should ensure strict implementation of the ban by disallowing any air travel company from using its airports in the future. The newspaper said that so far both Lebanon and Iraq rejected the commitments of the British proposal, but that does not mean that London will not retry in order to convince them to modify their position.
As confirmed by the newspaper, the new office of the British intelligence in Jordan is designed to play an important role in monitoring armed opposition in the main Syrian cities, and overseeing the accuracy of Syria’s neighbour’s commitment to the civil air ban after its issuance. Amman faced unprecedented Western, Gulf and Arab pressure in the past two months to modify its decision related to putting regulations on the Syrian opposition’s use of its territory to pass weapons and items through to Syrian territories.
The Jordanian security establishment fears that the growing strength of political Islam, especially the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria will have similar consequences in Jordan. Sources revealed that Amman informed both Britain and Saudi Arabia that they feared for their internal security if they responded to requests to build additional camps for displaced people and the Syrian opposition in their territory. The Jordanian king’s argument was that his intelligence had information that the Syrian security forces would sneak pro-regime sleeper cells among the displaced to carry out a series of assassinations against opponents inside Jordan, and to transfer chaos from Syria to Jordan to relieve pressure on the Syrian regime.