Russia Says Will Veto Unacceptable Syria Resolution
Russia said on Wednesday it would veto any U.N. resolution on Syria that it finds unacceptable, after demanding any measure rule out military intervention to halt the bloodshed touched off by protests against President Bashar al-Assad’s rule.
The political violence in Syria has killed at least 5,000 people in the past 10 months and activists say Assad’s forces have stepped up operations this week on opposition strongholds, from Damascus suburbs to the cities of Hama, Homs and the border provinces of Deraa and Idlib.
Arab and Western states urged the U.N. Security Council on Tuesday to act swiftly on a resolution calling for Assad to hand over powers to his deputy and defuse the 11-month-old uprising against his family’s dynastic rule.
“If the text will be unacceptable for us we will vote against it, of course,” Russian U.N. envoy Vitaly Churkin told reporters in Moscow via a videolink from New York.
“If it is a text that we consider erroneous, that will lead to a worsening of the crisis, we will not allow it to be passed. That is unequivocal,” he said.
His remarks came hours after Russia’s envoy to the European Union, Vladimir Chizhov, said there was no chance the Western-Arab draft text could be accepted unless it expressly rejected armed intervention.
Russia and China, both veto-wielding Security Council members, have resisted a Western push for a resolution condemning the Syrian government’s crackdown on unrest.
Despite the Russian comments, French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said a “window of hope” had opened. “We will work furiously in the next few days to try and get a resolution that will allow the Arab League to forge ahead in finding a solution,” he told parliament in Paris.
Russia says the West exploited fuzzy wording in a March 2011 U.N. Security Council resolution on Libya to turn a mandate to protect civilians in the North African country’s uprising into a push to remove the government, backed by NATO air strikes, that led to the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi.
Russia has also expressed concern that the draft’s threat of further measures against Syria could lead to sanctions, which it opposes. Its diplomats also want to remove the draft’s support for the Arab League’s plan for Assad to cede power.
“ECONOMIC PRESSURE”
Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani, who has led the Arab League’s efforts to tackle the Syrian crisis, attempted to allay Moscow and Beijing’s objections, saying it was trying to avoid a Libyan-style foreign role.
“We are not calling for foreign intervention,” he said. “We are advocating the exertion of concrete economic pressure so that the Syrian regime might realize that it is imperative to meet the demands of its people”