Coaching Winning Model United Nations Teams: A Teacher's Guide

Appendix D: Sample Position Paper

163 Syria in DISEC This position paper was written by a Marshall team in preparing for the National High School Model UN’s 2005 conference. As you can see, students should always update their position papers. Just having them available off-the-shelf can quickly leave oneself open to charges of obsolescence. Committee: Disarmament and International Security (DISEC) Country: Syria Topic: Confirming Failure to Disarm Student authors: Prashanth Parameswaran and Alyssa Katz School: George C. Marshall High School Background Information Syria, officially known as Syrian Arab Republic, is located in the Middle East sector of southwestern Asia and bordered clockwise by Turkey, Iraq, Jordan, Israel, and Lebanon. With a total landmass of 185,180 square kilometers, the terrain entails mainly of semiarid and desert plateaus, with a narrow coastal plain along the Mediterranean Sea and the Euphrates River running across the northeastern region of this country. In 1516, the Ottomans integrated Syria into its empire and were in possession of the region until four centuries later. When World War I broke out, the Allies solicited the aid of Arab nations including Syria to fight against the Turks with promise of postbellum independence, but France took control of the region until it gained independence in 1946. Nevertheless, the vestiges of hostile antiFrench sentiments have contributed to Syria’s resistance to the West after 1954. Between 1946 and 1956, Syrian history was marked by a series of political tumults, including its participation in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, three coups d’état in 1949, and another clash with Israeli forces in the spring of 1951. In 1961, Syria seceded from the United Arab Republic, a short-lived coalition with Egypt APPENDIX D: SAMPLE POSITION PAPER initiated three years before. In 1971, The Arab Socialist Renaissance (or the Ba’ath party) became the ruling political system in Syria. General Hafez al-Assad became president and ruled for the next 19 years until his death in June 2000. The unicameral , 250-member People’s Assembly currently presides over the legislative branch prescribed by its 1973 constitution, while President Bashar al-Assad (the second son of the former president) and his vice-presidents Abd al-Halim ibn Said Khaddam and Muhammad Zuhayr Mashariqa currently govern the executive branch. Introduction On April 17, 2003, Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk Al-Sharaa said, “The Syrian government is ready to sign a treaty under the UN’s supervision to make the whole Middle East a zone free from all mass destruction weapons—nuclear, chemical, and biological.”1 The Syrian Arab Republic is dedicated to strengthening the biological and nuclear non-proliferation regime, primarily through the two agreements , Biological Weapons Convention (BWC), and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), while maintaining a defense capability in the field of chemical weapons in the interest of national security and the belligerence of Israel. History Israel’s belligerent policy toward Syria is the main obstacle to our approach to regional disarmament. War is still a possibility since Israel has not agreed to withdraw peacefully from the Syrian Golan Heights and the zone in southern Lebanon which it has illegally occupied since the Arab-Israeli wars of 1967 and 1978, respectively. In the words of then Syrian ambassador to the United States, Walid al-Moualem, “Syria regards the Israeli occupation of both areas as an affront to Syria’s honor, an encroachment on its sovereignty, and a serious threat to its security .”2 Furthermore, Israel is the only nation in the Middle East that has nuclear capabilities, and has launched air strikes and detonated car bombs in Damascus in 2003 and 2004 to escalate tension. Given Israel’s systematic infringement of national sovereignty and threats to regional peace and security, the Syrian Arab Republic has decided to develop some defensive capabilities in the field of chemical weapons. 164 Appendix D _______________ 1 “Syria proposes Mideast free of WMD,” CNN.com, April 17, 2003, http://edition.cnn.com/2003/WORLD /meast/04/16/sprj.irq.un.syria/ (accessed January 2, 2005). 2 Zuhar Diab, “Syria’s Chemical and Biological Weapons: Assessing Capabilities and Motivations,” The Nonproliferation Review, 1997. Syria’s General Position Therefore, Syria is unwilling to accede to the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) until all weapons of mass destruction have been eliminated from the Middle East, and Israel adheres to the BWC and NPT. As Syria’s ambassador to Egypt, Issa Darwish, announced in 1999, “All Arab countries have adhered to the...