ASIA/IRAQ - Chaldean Patriarch Sako: Intervention against Syria would be "a disaster"

Baghdad (Agenzia Fides) - The US-led military intervention against Syria would be "a disaster. It would be like a volcano erupting with an explosion meant to destroy Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine. And maybe someone wants this". This is what the Patriarch of Babylon of the Chaldeans Louis Raphael I Sako expressed to Fides Agency with regards to his concern over the prospect of an outside attack, which seems to be imminent, against the regime of Assad. At the head of the most significant Christian community in Iraq, the Western intervention in Syria fatally recalls the experience lived by its people: "After 10 years of the so-called 'coalition of the willing', that overthrew Saddam" notes to Fides His Beatitude Sako "our Country is still battered by bombs, security problems, by the instability of the economic crisis". In addition, in the Syrian case, according to the Chaldean Patriarch things are even more complicated by the difficulty of grasping the real dynamics of the civil war which has been tearing apart that nation for years: "The opposition to Assad", notes Sako "is divided, the various groups fight each other, there is a proliferation of jiahdist militias ... What will happen to that Country, afterwards?". For the Patriarch, the formulas used by Western Countries to justify any intervention appear instrumental and confused: "Everyone is talking about democracy and freedom, but to reach those goals one must pass through historical processes and one cannot think of imposing them in a mechanical way or with force. The only way, in Syria, as elsewhere, is the search for political solutions. To push fighters to negotiate, to imagine a provisional government that involves both those of the regime and the opposition forces. Listening to what the Syrian people really want in their majority". The Chaldean Patriarch is also cautious on the choice of justifying the intervention as an inevitable retaliation before the use of chemical weapons by the army of Assad: "Westerners" says His Beatitude Sako "have also justified the intervention against Saddam with the accusation that the Iraqi Rais had weapons of mass destruction. But those weapons have not been found". (GV) (Agenzia Fides 28/08/2013).