Is EU short on options to end violence in Syria?

The bloc's fledgling foreign service, under the leadership of Catherine Ashton, can do very little as "EU diplomacy is still the lowest common denominator," said Edward Burke of the CER. "We should stop the rhetoric and get real, come up with a plan that may be imperfect but one that reduces the violence," Burke said. "The Russians are not completely wrong," he said of Moscow's continuing distance with the US-led line. ...In Bosnia, Burke recalled, the EU continued to talk to the Slobodan Milosevic regime despite Serbia's complicity in atrocities there. "What I don't understand is that we throw away all communications channels with Damascus," he said.