Any intervention in Syria is illegitimate unless it is not clearly proved that the country used chemical weapons against civilians and unless the UN Security Council approves of military operation, Prime Minister Robert Fico stated on Saturday on Slovak Radio's discussion programme Sobotne Dialogy (Saturday Dialogues).
In his words, Slovakia does not want to have anything to do with military action in Syria country if those two conditions are not met. Fico also added that the use of military force has only brought negative experiences in the recent years. "Whatever the reason for such an action was, it later resulted in chaos," cautioned the prime minister, pointing to the current troubled situation in Iraq and Libya. The UN Security Council is the only body that can grant a mandate for the intervention, according to Fico. "Is there any point in having the Security Council then? What's the UN for if it ceases to exercise its powers, with big countries doing what they please," said the premier. Meanwhile, American President Barrack Obama is trying to persuade Congress to authorize military action (the US accuses President Bashar al-Assad's forces of killing 1,429 people in a poison gas attack on 21 August). According to the UN, so far some 100,000 people have died in the two-and-a-half-year-old Syrian conflict.
