EU Sets Out Syria Export Banned List, from Caviar to Viruses
The European Union announced on Friday that caviar, cigars and leather shoes are among luxury goods that may no longer be exported to Syria, alongside laboratory viruses and gas masks.
Sanctions targeting the Assad couple's high-end lifestyle will enter force on Sunday, the EU said, as Brussels seeks to punish the regime over the relentless bloodshed that has killed over 14,000 people since March last year.
The detailed list of products includes "equipment, goods and technology that may be used for manufacturing and maintaining goods that may be used for internal repression," the EU said in a statement.
"The export to Syria of such items is prohibited or will require prior authorization," it added.
"We have carefully calibrated today's decisions to avoid affecting the Syrian people," EU foreign affairs Chief Catherine Ashton said in the statement.
The EU listed the banned items as including caviar, truffles, and cigars costing more than 10 euros; leather goods that cost more than 200 euros, watches costing 500 euros, shoes worth more than 600 euros, cars costing more than 25,000 euros as well as "planes and boats."
The so-called "dual use" goods now banned include gas masks, chemical storage tanks, certain viruses, bacteria and toxins.
Other chemicals and toxins, or valves and pumps used in their manufacturing, plus software or other technologies needed to make any goods on the banned list, require "authorization for export".
Source: Agence France Presse
| Copyright © 2012 Naharnet.com. All Rights Reserved. | https://naharnet.com/stories/en/43508 |