DAMASCUS - The Syrian government took prominent human rights activists to task Wednesday for having called on the European Union not to sign a trade deal with Damascus because of its poor rights record.
"In asking the EU not to sign the association agreement with Syria, lawyer Anwar Bunni and his colleagues are damaging the interests of the homeland in the eyes of a foreign delegation," government daily Ath-Thawra said.
The newspaper accused them of "adopting the same stance as that of foreign forces putting pressure on Syria, such as Zionism and the United States".
The militants, it said, "talk big about human rights and democracy, but they oppose the rights of their own country and invite international organisations (to act) against their people."
Bunni responded to the Ath-Thawra article by saying he hoped it would be the "beginning of a dialogue on the national interest and not an attempt to justify a (new) campaign of arrests."
"The interests of the nation lie in respect for civil society's rights, an independent judiciary, the release of political detainees and the battle against corruption," he said.
"The association agreement contains a key clause on human rights that everyone has the right to discuss."
Bunni and two other prominent rights activists met last week with a visiting EU parliamentary delegation.
They argued against EU signature of the association agreement, which was initialled in October 2004.
Unless the "government respects human rights by freeing political detainees, and ... by freeing the press and getting rid of emergency laws and security courts," the accord should not be signed, Bunni said he told the delegation.
"Otherwise the partnership agreement will be reached with a non-democratic government. It will be an additional method for this government to suppress the Syrian people even more," he said.
Syria is the last country in the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership not to have signed an association agreement as part of a free trade zone envisioned for 2010.
06/22/2005 13:16 GMT