Austria says peackeepers may quit Golan if EU arms rebels

Reuters via Yahoo! News ^ | May 21, 2013 | Michael Shields

[Pan_Yan]

VIENNA (Reuters) - Austria may pull its peacekeeping troops from the Golan Heights, evacuating the U.N. buffer zone, its defence minister warned on Tuesday, as Syria and Israel exchanged fire across a long dormant frontline now inflamed by civil war.

Vienna's warning was aimed at Britain and other allies which want to help Syrian rebels by lifting an EU arms embargo - doing so, minister Gerald Klug told Reuters, would rob Austrian troops of their neutrality in a Syrian conflict that has already seen foreign peacekeepers come under fire and some even held hostage.

He stopped short of saying an end to the EU arms ban would automatically prompt the departure of the 380 Austrian soldiers. But their withdrawal after four decades keeping the peace since the 1973 Arab-Israeli Yom Kippur war would leave a huge hole in the already troubled, 1,000-strong U.N. force separating two of the world's biggest armies, which are technically still at war.

"My view is that if the arms embargo were not extended, then the impartiality of the peace mission could no longer be maintained," Klug said in an interview a day before EU leaders in Brussels will discuss an arms embargo that expires on June 1.

[Pan_Yan]

Related:
Phippines may pull peacekeepers from Golan

UNDOF Facts and Figures - United Nations Disengagement Observer Force

Current authorization until 30 June 2013
Security Council resolution 2084 (2012) of 19 December 2012

Strength

Current (31 March 2013)

• 917 troops
• 40 international staff*
• 98 local civilian staff*

*Note: Statistics for international and local civilians are as of 31 December 2012

Country contributors of military personnel

Austria, India and Philippines

Fatalities

• 43 troops
• 1 international civilian
  _____
• 44 total

Financial aspects

• Method of financing: Assessment in respect of a Special Account
• Approved budget (1 July 2012 - 30 June 2013): $45,992,000 [A/C.5/66/18]

[SJackson]

Middle East and terrorism, occasional political and Jewish issues Ping List. High Volume

If you’d like to be on or off, please FR mail me.

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Makes sense.

[IXNK]

Can anyone tell me why we are arming rebels that are in league with al-Qaeda? Just because they are Sunnis and their enemy (and ours) is linked to Iran? The enemy of my enemy is my pal is a cliche that should be buried with this insane foreign policy.

[Pan_Yan]

Can anyone tell me why we are arming rebels that are in league with al-Qaeda?

If you look at our actions in the "Arab Spring" you can only come to one of two conclusions:

1) The idealistic moonbats at the State Department really believe that these Muslim countries are capable of building and sustaining democracies.

-or-

2) We elected people who truly support the radicals who will institute Sharia law and jihad against the West.

[SunkenCiv]

They were okay with having Iran and Syria arm tens of thousands of jihadists in their midst, inside Lebanon, because the nation that hoisted Kurt Waldheim on its shoulders likes the idea that Israel be destroyed and their Fuehrer’s Holocaust completed.

Thanks Pan_Yan.