True friends do not sit back passively and watch people being abused or killed. True friends of Syria should not do so either.

As a result, it is self-evident that Foreign Minister Villy Søvndal should go to Tunisia next week to enrol Denmark in the coalition of Syria’s Friends who refuse to give up on a distressed Syria simply because Russia and China have vetoed tougher United Nations pressure.

In the words of the United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Syrians are being subjected to ‘appalling brutality’ – or as Søvndal said on Wednesday in the European Parliament ‘A brutal military machine’.

Six weeks ago, the United Nations gave up counting the number of civilians killed in Syria when numbers reached 5,400.

Søvndal is right in calling for the European Union to support the Arab League’s demands that the Assad dictatorship must stop its bloody violations. That the dictatorship should withdraw its weapons from Syrian towns. That thousands of political prisoners should be released. That independent observers should be deployed, and that the media should be given access to cover developments in the country.

The Russian foreign minister’s analysis that the Arab League and the European Union are looking to have Assad removed, should be the correct interpretation. His demise is essential. Assad has never had a righteous claim to power, and he has now abandoned his responsibilities and betrayed his country.

Syria’s Friends should not solely toughen the economic and political pressure on the Assad regime. They should also make it clear to the kingpins of the dictatorship that they are liable to charges at the International Criminal Court. The coalition should also seek Iraq’s help in securing the Iraqi-Syrian border against Iraqi extremists meddling in the Syrian tragedy.

The Syrians need help to free themselves of the dictatorship’s terrifying violations. The opposition is not asking for military intervention as in Libya – a request both the Arab League and the West would prefer to avoid.

But in Tunisia, the Syrian opposition may ask for a humanitarian corridor to secure supplies to Syrian cities of the food, medicine and other emergency aid that is necessary.

Such a request sounds as politically correct as it is militarily precarious and as such is not an operation that can be decided in a political flurry and without a certainty that we and the Syrians are not drawn into more hostilities – when what the Syrians need is less conflict.

Although Assad should be punished, Syria would be better served by a Yemeni rather than a Libyan solution. Allowing the blood soiled dictator to escape, in return for his country being allowed to escape the clutches of his dictatorship.

FACEBOOK – Follow Politiken’s News in English