Austrian Foreign Minister Michael Spindelegger called on the European Union to instead launch a political process in order to re-establish peace and security in the Middle Eastern Arab country.
In an interview with The Associated Press in Vienna on Friday, Spindelegger said that the EU's arms embargo on terrorists fighting against the Syrian government should be extended to maintain the safety of UN peacekeepers in the Golan Heights.
Lifting the EU embargo "would give us real problems on the Golan Heights," Spindelegger noted.
Austria has 377 soldiers in the 900-strong UN peacekeeping force deployed in the occupied Golan Heights.
Spindelegger stated that the UN peacekeepers could be targeted if European Union foreign ministers meeting in Brussels on Monday decide to allow EU states to send weapons to the terrorists.
The Austrian foreign minister went on to say that a supply of more weapons into Syria could worsen the crisis, threaten a US-Russian peace initiative and create more divisions in the UN Security Council.
"We believe there are enough weapons in Syria," Spindelegger said. "We support a cease-fire,
not weapons deliveries."
So far European foreign ministers have failed to reach an agreement on whether to lift an arms embargo on the foreign-backed terrorists in Syria.
Austria, Germany, Sweden and other states have expressed concerns that arming the terrorists would spread the deadly conflict, but France and Britain are pushing the 27-nation bloc to allow EU members to ship weapons to foreign-backed terrorists.
The Syrian crisis has dragged on for over two years, and many people, including large numbers of Syrian soldiers and security personnel, have been killed in the foreign-sponsored insurgency.
The Syrian government says that the chaos is being orchestrated from outside the country, and there are reports that a very large number of the terrorists are foreign nationals.
On May 18, Syrian President Bashar Assad said terrorists from 29 different countries are fighting against the government in different parts of the country.
“Recent credible reports show that there are approximately 29 nationalities of foreign fighters engaged in terrorism activities within Syria’s borders,” Assad told Argentine journalists in Damascus.