France on March 2 said it is closing its embassy in Syria, a day after two French journalists escaped to Lebanon after being trapped for days in the besieged Syrian city of Homs. French President Nicolas Sarkozy made the announcement in Brussels, where EU leaders were debating their response to the Syrian military’s crackdown on the opposition uprising in Syria. The United States and Britain already have closed their embassies in Syria.
“What is happening is a scandal,” Sarkozy said, noting that the European Council already has “condemned in the harshest terms what is happening in Syria.”
Britain on March 1 also pulled its diplomats out of Syria for security reasons but is not breaking diplomatic ties with Damascus after months of violent political turmoil. “We now judge that the deterioration of the security situation in Damascus puts our embassy staff and premises at risk, and have taken the decision to withdraw staff accordingly. Our ambassador and diplomatic staff left Syria on 29 February and will return to the UK shortly,” Foreign Secretary William Hague said in a statement.
A Foreign Office spokesman said Britain had not broken diplomatic ties with Syria. “The (Syrian) embassy in London will remain open so we can have a channel of communication to the Syrian regime,” he said.