Imperialist meddling

British governments have a history of issuing edicts about other people's land, such as the Balfour declaration on a Jewish homeland in Palestine.

That has proven a disaster for the people in the region just as Britain's change of official policy in recognising the National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces cobbled together last week in Doha will be for Syria.

Hague condemns the Syrian government as "barbaric" for continuing "its aerial warfare" against the armed groups attempting to overthrow it.

Yet he is part of a government that admits to having authorised its forces' use of 349 drones - "precision-guided weapons" - in attacks on targets in Afghanistan.

Who knows how many civilians have been killed in such attacks? The public doesn't because neither the military nor the government provides any such details.

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However, the more widely reported US employment of drones in Pakistan and Israeli "precision-guided" bombs in Gaza have thrown up huge numbers of civilian casualties, so there is little reason to suppose a less bloody result in Afghanistan.

Hague's classic colonialist stance accepts the slaughter by US, British, Israeli and French air forces as regrettable but necessary while denouncing the death toll occasioned by the Syrian military as the embodiment of evil.

Our Foreign Secretary declares that the British government will not rule out any action, subject to international law, to save lives.

He also says that the situation is critical because efforts to engineer a peaceful solution have been unsuccessful, but he ignores the reality that the West has underwritten opposition forces' refusal to co-operate with diplomatic efforts to seek a negotiated outcome.

The cutting edge of the rebel armed effort is supplied by Salafist units of veterans of conflicts in Afghanistan, Algeria, Chechnya and elsewhere who reject negotiations that could lead to democracy, being intent on imposing their version of an Islamist society.

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Reactionary regimes in Saudi Arabia and Qatar have been to the fore in continuing to supply arms to the rebels through Turkey in particular.

It says something about the impatience of Britain to join France - Syria's former colonial master - in recognising the rebel coalition as a government-in-exile that the US hesitates to make this step.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has voiced Washington's open hostility to President Bashar al-Assad, but Barack Obama is still wary of possible risks to US interests in the area, including how a Salafist-dominated new regime might relate to Israel.

Not that Washington is completely hands off in its approach.

It has encouraged its allies in Riyadh to deliver arms to groups it supports on the Turkish border with Syria, which arouses little hope for an outcome based on democracy.

It is scandalous that our government is so besotted with the possibility of winning future arms deals with Damascus after Assad's demise that it is prepared to act in this adventurist manner.

China and, especially, Russia have been berated for their refusal to dance to the "overthrow Assad" tune, but their insistence on inclusive negotiations remains the most positive approach.

If the Nato powers succeed in bleeding the Assad regime to death, the result could prove very destabilising for the entire region.