Sputnik: What is your take on the West's actions against Syria from the international law perspective?
Dr. Jan Oberg: It is clearly a violation of international law, it’s the whole spirit of the charter that’s been undermined by rushing to war and bombing Syria without evidence and stuff like that and it is what the international law experts would call an aggression and certainly in total violation of article one of the UN charter which says that peace shall be established by peaceful means. So I’m sorry to say that I think that it's the most important organization; we should care very much about the UN because we have nothing better, but all countries are playing their games in New York, it’s just being used for other kinds of games and nobody respects the charter anymore.
Sputnik: Do you think that the UN Security Council in itself is inherently flawed and perhaps it needs to be restructured somehow?
Sputnik: And you said that you feel that the airstrike that was carried out by the US, France and the UK was illegal, can you elaborate on what exactly makes it illegal?
Sputnik: So what do you think is behind the Salisbury case and now the case with Douma?
Dr. Jan Oberg: Syria is so hugely complex and I must say that the intellectual dwarfs that have created the narrative of Syria should be ashamed of themselves, named that everything is the fault of Bashar al-Assad, there is no conflict on Earth that is all due to one person, whether it’s Saddam, or Slobodan Milosevic, or Putin, or George Bush, or Bashar al-Assad. All these conflicts are hugely complex things having to do with history, traumas, constitution, economic crisis, political crisis and unless we begin to focus on all —-- 4.06?of media, unless we begin to focus on the underlying conflict we will never get these problems solved.
Sputnik: The strike comes year after a similar attack on the Shayrat Airbase can you explain the differences between the situation now and the situation then?
Dr. Jan Oberg: There’s anything particularly interesting to say there, I mean the same thing applied a year ago and that means that the US administration has learned nothing which I also would not have not expected it to have done; that you do not punish, you do not do your action before you know what happened, the Khan Shaykhun incident also was not known what it was before the bombing took place, both of the things look like some kind of symbolic business, don't misunderstand my words, it was not a huge thing to do, it was a kind of we slap your face, remember who we are and we can do it again.
The views of the speaker do not necessarily reflect those of Sputnik.