By Europe correspondent Barbara Miller, wires Posted Sat Mar 16, 2013 8:36am AEDT
Photo: David Cameron (L) and Francois Hollande (R) told EU leaders that scrapping the arms embargo to arm opposition forces would put pressure on the Assad regime. (Reuters: Francois Lenoir, file photo)
Britain and France have asked European leaders to end an arms embargo on Syria so they can provide weapons to opposition forces fighting against the government of Bashar al-Assad.
The proposal, made at an EU summit in Brussels, was met with little support, according to diplomats.
Despite this, EU foreign ministers will consider the issue again next week.
British prime minister David Cameron said it was time to recognise the international community's current approach to Syria was not yielding the desired results.
"Two years in, 70,000 people are dead," he said. "There's a huge refugee and humanitarian crisis. Assad is still in place."
Mr Cameron said the arms embargo should be lifted because the Syrian regime has access to weapons anyway.
"As things stand today, I am not saying that Britain would actually like to supply arms to rebel groups," he said.
"What we want to do is work with them and try to make sure that they are doing the right thing. And with technical assistance we are able to do that."
French president Francois Hollande went further, saying he would be prepared to break the embargo if agreement can not be reached.
Mr Hollande said he had received guarantees from the Syrian opposition that any arms delivered to them would end up in the right hands.
"I will do everything so that at the end of May at the very latest... a common solution is adopted by the (European) Union," he said.
French officials say, for now, Paris is keener to use the scrapping of the embargo as a bargaining chip to put political pressure on Mr Assad than to actually supply arms.
'Fragile situation'
German chancellor Angela Merkel, a leading opponent of lifting the embargo, said there was a danger that Mr Assad's allies, Russia and Iran, could step up arms supplies to his regime if the 27-nation EU lifted its restrictions.
She said the fact that Britain and France now wanted to drop the ban does not mean the 25 other states must follow suit.
"That will not be the case," she told a news conference in Brussels.
"Others have... pointed to the fact that Iran and also Russia are only waiting for a signal to export arms [and] that one must also be aware of the fragile situation in Lebanon and what that means for the arming of Hezbollah.
German officials cite what happened in North Africa, where guns smuggled out of Libya helped arm Islamists in Mali.
European Council president Herman van Rompuy said leaders had asked their foreign ministers to look at the arms embargo "as a matter of priority" at a March 22-23 meeting in Dublin.
Syrian insurgents are a disparate array of mostly locally-organised units, only some of which are loyal to the Free Syrian Army, which is loosely linked to the internationally recognised political opposition, the Cairo-based Syrian National Coalition.
Others are hardline Sunni Islamist factions, such as the al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front, which Washington calls a terrorist group, but which has won prestige for its battlefield exploits.
France and Britain reopened the Syrian issue only days after EU states had hammered out a hard-fought compromise to relax an embargo to allow non-lethal aid to the opposition, such as armoured vehicles and technical assistance.
A French foreign ministry official said any changes to the arms embargo would be gradual and likely be implemented only when the current package of EU sanctions on Syria expires at the end of May.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Antonio Guterres, said the "staggering escalation" of the conflict in Syria has caused an unprecedented acceleration of the humanitarian crisis.
Mr Guterres has appealed to governments around the world to step up humanitarian aid, calling it a "morale obligation" that is "essential to preserve global peace and global security".
There are more than 1 million registered Syrian refugees in neighbouring countries.
ABC/Reuters
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