The UK Commons Motion on Syria.

Following a day of frantic politics the UK government has finally released the text of the motion it is going to present to the lower house of the UK Parliament for debate and possible vote. The publication came after the opposition Labour Party took the unusual step of tabling an amendment to an unseen motion. The Labour amendment has yet to be published in full but it is said to require Parliament to wait for and debate the United Nations (UN) inspection team's report before voting on direct British military intervention in Syria. Labour also indicated that unless their amendment was accepted they would vote against the government's motion most likely defeating it.

Therefore the government's motion that can be read here; http://www.itv.com/news/2013-08-28/the-full-text-of-the-governments-motion-on-syria/ seems to have been hastily rewritten to assuage the Labour Party's concerns and ensure that the motion is passed. Therefore the 9th paragraph ends with the clear guarantee that; "Before any direct British involvement in such action a further vote of the House of Commons will take place." However this watered down motion is still deeply flawed, in violation of international and reads like a recipe for the continuation of the conflict in Syria.

For example the opening paragraph reads; "Deplores the use of chemical weapons in Syria on 21 August 2013 by the Assad regime." There is absolutely no evidence that the Syrian government used chemical weapons on August 21st or any other date and the description of the Syrian government as "the Assad regime" is clearly intended to undermine the legitimacy of the Syrian government violating the sovereignty of the Syrian state.

The 4th paragraph talks about the need for a strong humanitarian support that is focused on saving lives and deterring the further use of Syria's chemical weapons. The government intends to use this as a justification to supply the Saudi and Qatari Irregular Army (SQIA) with equipment such as gas masks to protect them from chemical weapons. This will of course better equips the SQIA to use their chemical weapon stockpiles without risk to themselves. This represents a clear violation of the international prohibition on using chemical weapons against a civilian population and the 2nd paragraph of this very motion.

Paragraph 5 is simply factually inaccurate. The SQIA are considered as unlawful combatants under the customary law (article 4, 3rd Geneva Convention) and as such are deemed to be less then human meaning that no crime against humanity including the use of chemical weapons can be committed against them. Therefore international law provides no basis for their protection and attempts to protect them actually threatens the entire basis of international law by normalising their unlawful and immoral conduct.

The 7th to 9th paragraphs merely concedes that there is never going to be a UN resolution authorising foreign military intervention in Syria under the current circumstances because to do so would violate a host of international laws and the UN's own charter. Therefore it attempts to pave the way for the UK to take hostile and unlawful military action against Syria inspite of the opposition of the UN.

For these reasons I think it is quite clear that I believe this motion should be rejected by UK Members of Parliament (MP's). In fact I would go further and say that the person tabling this motion in the House should immediately arrested and expelled from Parliament.

20:15 on 28/8/13.