DAMASCUS (Dispatches) – Syrian Minister of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates Faisal Mekdad has slammed unilateral sanctions imposed by the United States and its Western allies against his war-torn Arab nation and a number of other countries, stating that the coercive measures are meant to impoverish the targeted states and exert control over them.
“The regime of unilateral coercive sanctions, slapped by Western countries against a number of world countries, including Syria and Russia, is aimed at stealing those nations’ assets, depriving them [of their natural resources] and keeping them under their hegemony,” Mekdad told visiting Rector of the Diplomatic Academy at the Russian Foreign Ministry Alexander Yakovenko in Damascus.
The two sides then exchanged viewpoints on various regional and international developments, and explored avenues on how to resolve existing crises.
They also agreed to further promote bilateral cooperation and interaction between the diplomatic institutes of their respective countries in various fields, such as the exchange of faculty members, students and researchers.
Syria has been a target of U.S. sanctions since 1979. Washington and its Western allies have dramatically tightened their economic sanctions and restrictions on Damascus after 2011, when the Arab country found itself in the grip of rampant foreign-backed militancy and terrorism.
The coercive U.S. measures intensified even further with the passing of the Caesar Act in 2019, which targeted any individual and business that participated either directly or indirectly in Syria’s reconstruction efforts.
Syria has also condemned the American occupation forces’ looting of its oil and wealth, urging the United States to stop its support for terrorist and separatist groups and to swiftly withdraw from the Syrian territory.
In a tweet on Saturday, Syria’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates said that the American occupation forces continued to plunder the Arab country’s oil and wealth through northern Iraq to Turkey over the past weeks.
“These American actions, which are characterized by banditry, contradict international humanitarian law, and lead to the impoverishment of the Syrian people and prolong their suffering,” the ministry tweeted.
It added that Syria once again slams the U.S. troops for looting its assets and calls on the American administration to stop them and pay compensation to the Syrian people because the United States should not play the role of pirates and bandits.
Earlier in the day, Syria’s official news agency SANA, cited sources in al-Yarubiyah countryside, reported that the U.S. occupation forces have continued to loot and plunder the war-ravaged country’s resources and took out dozens of tanks loaded with stolen oil from Syrian fields of al-Jazeera towards Iraqi territories during the past hours.
According to the sources, the American occupation took out a convoy of 34 tankers loaded with stolen oil from al-Jazeera fields via the illegal al-Mahmudiya crossing, in addition to 40 other tankers through the illegal al-Walid crossing to Iraqi territory.