Assad Blocks UN Intervention in Syria, Security Council Split
Efforts to press Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to halt attacks on anti-government protesters are stalled at the United Nations, diplomats and officials said as the crackdown intensified today.
Assad has rejected Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s request to send a humanitarian assessment team to Syria and hasn’t responded to the UN Human Rights Council’s call for a fact- finding mission. Assad agreed last week to allow UN aid workers into the country, and then reneged on that pledge, UN spokesman Martin Nesirky said.
British and French efforts this week to build support for Security Council action haven’t won the required backing of nine of the 15 members, diplomats said after meeting today. Informal talks on a resolution condemning attacks on protesters and threatening sanctions haven’t generated a text.
“I don’t see that there are the votes there presently,” U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice said.
The Security Council “cannot stay silent,” Britain’s Ambassador Mark Lyall Grant said. “I expressed concern about the deteriorating situation, the report of now well over 800 civilians killed and more than 8,000 people arrested.”
Syrian security forces killed two protesters in the central city of Homs today, one in the southern city of Daraa and another near Barzeh, a suburb of the capital, Damascus, Mahmoud Merhi of the Arab Organization for Human Rights and Ammar Qurabi, head of the National Organization for Human Rights, said in telephone interviews.
New Protests
Protests also erupted in Hama, Banias, Aleppo and Idlib, while in Daraa people were barred from attending Friday prayers. There were “tanks outside every mosque,” Qurabi said.
The suppression of pro-democracy protests in Syria began in mid-March after popular revolts ousted longtime leaders in Egypt and Tunisia. The uprising drew initial pledges of change from Assad, who lifted an emergency law in place since 1963 and announced a new government. He hasn’t repeated the assurances in recent weeks, as security forces stepped up their assaults.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Vitaly Churkin, the nation’s UN ambassador, opposed the bid by Western nations to intervene.
“Dialogue” between the government and its opponents “must not be interrupted,” Lavrov said today in the Kazakhstan capital Almaty, the German Press Agency reported. “We must not create a situation similar to Libya.”
Churkin, who backed imposition of UN sanctions on Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi’s regime and abstained from the vote to authorize military action against his security forces, told reporters the situation in Syria was “completely different.”
Asked whether his government would back Security Council action, China’s Ambassador Li Baodong stated a preference for Ban’s pressure on Assad.
“‘We support the secretary-general’s efforts to play a very important role and negotiate with the Syrian government to see whether a solution can be found,” Li said.
To contact the reporter on this story: Bill Varner at the United Nations at wvarner@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Mark Silva in Washington at msilva34@bloomberg.net
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