Western nations have no immediate plans for military action to stop the repression of protests in Syria or to halt Iran’s nuclear programme, British Foreign Secretary William Hague said Sunday.
Asked if there was a possibility of a no-fly zone in Syria like the one imposed over Libya last year, Hague said there was “no serious prospect” of a UN resolution on the subject.
“We haven’t been looking at a no-fly zone,” Hague told Sky News, saying it would be only effective in tandem with other measures, and that the Syrian regime had not been relying on air power to repress protests.
“There is no serious prospect certainly at the moment of the United Nations Security Council agreeing any resulution at the moment, let alone agreeing a resolution comparable to anything that happened in Libya.”
But he said that if the current Arab League monitoring mission in Syria does not work “I hope they (the Arab League) will come to the UN and suggest a way forward that we can all get behind.”
Hague was also cool on suggestions by Qatar that Arab forces should be sent into Syria to stop the deadly 10-month crackdown on dissent by President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
