23 March, 2012 — RT

With the United States still threatening Damascus with more pressure and isolation, Lebanese Foreign Minister Adnan Mansour told RT that the policy of backing one side in any national conflict could lead to disaster for the entire region.

A double-standards policy is applied to almost any vitally important issue in the Middle East, said the minister, whether it is the Syrian conflict, Israeli-Lebanese tension, or the Iranian nuclear issue.

“We are against the policy of double standards, when great powers back one of the parties in a dispute. This policy is a source of great suffering in the Middle East,” Adnan Mansour explained.

First, he said, the Syrian armed groups who are fighting against the government get funded and supplied with weapons and then they go and destroy civilian facilities with the very same weapons.

“We hear calls for military intervention coming from within Syria, as well as internationally. We see one party in the conflict been backed against the other. That is, the opposition being supported to fight the government,” Mansour went on to explain.

Violence produces more violence, the minister noted, and “if every opposition movement in the world were to push its agenda through violence, the world would go up in flames.”

Meanwhile, the UN Security Council has adopted a non-binding statement on Syria. It endorses special envoy Kofi Annan‘s peace plan, calling on both sides of the conflict to agree to a ceasefire and to secure humanitarian access to the country.