Lord Stoddart of Swindon – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Stoddart of Swindon on 2014-06-18.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, further to the Written Statement by Baroness Warsi on 17 June (WS 586–88), whether they plan to abandon their demand that President Assad step down and to urge co-operation between his government and the official opposition to defeat the Islamic State of Iraq and ash-Sham and other Islamic terrorist groups in Syria.

Baroness Warsi

The Assad regime is the primary cause of terrorism in Syria, not the solution to it. The most effective way to tackle terrorism in Syria is to support the moderate opposition in its efforts to protect the Syrian people from the twin threats of tyranny and terrorism. The only sustainable solution to the crisis in Syria is to reach a negotiated political transition by the mutual consent of both sides – this is the principle in the Geneva Communiqué as endorsed by the UN Security Council.