It’s not often that an international conference produces a pleasant surprise. But the 103 nations that attended a conference of Friends of the Syrian People in Paris yesterday did so. The difference started with French President Francois Hollande’s inaugural address — where he described the crisis in Syria as “a threat to international security and peace.” In diplomatic parlance, that’s a coded demand for the issue to be considered under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter — which allows for military intervention. Hollande, in short, means to stop the Friends of the Syrian People from continuing to dance around the issue, as they did at previous gatherings in Tunis and Istanbul.
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