France calls for UNSC meeting over Syria

Monitoring Desk

PARIS: France on Sunday called for an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council over Syria following the launch of Turkey’s Operation Olive Branch in Syria’s Afrin, French Foreign Ministry announced in a statement.

“Ghouta, Idlib, Afrin – Fra-nce asks for an urgent meeting of the Security Council,” French Foreign Minister Je-an-Yves Le Drian tweeted, a-dding he spoke to his Turkish counterpart Mevlut Cavus-oglu by phone on Sunday.

“France is attentive to the security of Turkey, its territory and its borders. It calls on the Turkish authorities to act with restraint in a difficult context where the humanitarian situation is deteriorating in several regions of Syria as a result of the military operations carried out there by the regime of Damascus and its allies,” the Ministry said in a statement.

France also condemned the “indiscriminate bombings” targeting inhabited areas and medical centers led by the Syrian regime in the northwestern province of Idlib in recent weeks and called for “the immediate opening of humanitarian access to eastern Ghouta, where 400,000 besieged civilians are in a critical situation.”

The operation — aimed at eliminating PYD/PKK and Daesh elements from Syria’s Afrin — was launched at 5 p.m. (GMT1400) on Saturday. It was being carried out under the framework of Turkey’s rights based on international law, UN Security Council’s decisions, self-defense rights under the UN charter and respect to Syria’s territorial integrity, according to Turkish military.

Afrin has been a major hideout for the PYD/PKK since July 2012 when the Assad regime in Syria left the city to the terror group without putting up a fight.