Angola: Russia and China Again Veto Syria Resolution

Πηγή: allAfrica
July 20 2012

United Nations — Russia and China again vetoed a Western-backed U.N. resolution Thursday aimed at pressuring President Bashar Assad's government to end the escalating civil war in Syria, sparking dire warnings of even greater bloodshed and spillover to the wider region.

The 11-2 vote, with two abstentions from South Africa and Pakistan, was the third double veto of a resolution addressing the Syria crisis, now in its 17th month, by Damascus' most important allies.

The key stumbling block was the West's insistence that a new resolution include the threat of non-military sanctions to step up pressure against Assad's regime. The sanctions are under Chapter 7 of the U.N. Charter, which also includes provisions authorizing the use of force, but no force was authorized in the British draft.

Russia's U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said the resolution should never have been put to a vote because the sponsors knew it had no chance of adoption.

"We simply cannot accept a document under Chapter 7, one which would open the path for the pressure of sanctions and further to external military involvement in Syrian domestic affairs," he said.

The defeat leaves in limbo the future of the 300-strong U.N. observer mission in Syria, which was forced to suspend operations because of the intensified fighting. Its mandate, to monitor a cease-fire and implementation of international envoy Kofi Annan's six-point peace plan, expires Friday.

UN schedules vote on new Syria resolution

Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, shakes hands with United Nations special envoy Kofi Annan in Moscow, Russia, Tuesday, July 17, 2012. Annan discussed the Syria crisis with Lavrov on Monday, and is scheduled to meet with President Putin on Tuesday. The UN and Arab League envoy to the Syrian crisis has begun his meeting with the Russian president by saying that Syria is at a crossroads, as violence escalates. 

Πηγή: CBS news
July 18 2012

UNITED NATIONS — Russia remained at loggerheads with the U.S. and its European allies ahead of a scheduled vote Wednesday afternoon on a new Syria resolution and there appeared to be little hope that the U.N.'s most powerful body would unite behind a plan to end the 17-month civil war in the Mideastern country.

The key stumbling block is the Western demand for a resolution threatening non-military sanctions and tied to Chapter 7 of the United Nations Charter, which could eventually allow the use of force to end the conflict in Syria.

Russia is adamantly opposed to any mention of sanctions or Chapter 7. After Security Council consultations late Tuesday on a revised draft resolution pushed by Moscow, Russia's deputy U.N. ambassador Alexander Pankin said these remain "red lines."

Russia has said it will veto any Chapter 7 resolution, but council diplomats said there is still a possibility of last-minute negotiations.

There has been a lot of diplomatic scrambling to try to get council unity, which would send a much stronger signal to Syria. International envoy Kofi Annan has been in Russia for two days of high-level meetings, including talks with President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday.

Annan told reporters in Moscow that he and Putin focused on "what measures need to be taken to end the violence and the killing and how we move on to the political transition," and he urged the council to try to find language "that will pull everybody together for us to move forward on this critical issue."

The mandate of the 300-strong U.N. observer force in Syria expires on Friday and the Security Council must decide by then whether to extend it.

The U.S. and its European allies contend that the unarmed observers were authorized for 90 days to monitor a cease-fire and implementation of Annan's six-point peace plan — and with violence dramatically escalating they insist that there must be consequences for non-compliance.

The Western draft would impose non-military sanctions against Assad's regime if it fails to withdraw troops and heavy weapons from populated areas within 10 days — a key plank of the Annan plan.

"We're very open to the Russians and other partners on the Security Council engaging with us on the text which we have proposed," Britain's deputy ambassador Philip Parham said after Tuesday's closed meeting.

Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Tuesday after the Putin-Annan meeting that Moscow is ready to seek consensus in the Security Council, but gave no indication how it would resolve a disagreement over the Western draft.

"I don't see a reason that we couldn't agree in the Security Council. We are prepared for that," Lavrov said according to the Interfax news agency.

Moscow's proposed resolution calls for the "immediate implementation" of Annan's plan and guidelines for a political transition approved at a meeting in Geneva last month but makes no mention of sanctions.

There were no comments from Putin after the meeting, but at its opening he promised Russia would do all it could to support Annan's effort.

Russia and China incurred international criticism by twice vetoing U.N. resolutions to increase pressure on Assad.

Although Western nations appear to have little appetite for force, Russia fears a repeat of the NATO campaign in Libya and adamantly opposes any prospect of international intervention in the 17-month-old conflict.

British Foreign Secretary William Hague insisted during a trip to Jordan on Tuesday that a Chapter 7 resolution is required to implement Annan's peace plan, calling the process the "best hope" for ending the civil war in Syria and urging Russia and China to get on board.

In Beijing, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon sat down for talks Wednesday morning with Chinese President Hu Jintao.

After the meeting, Ban said the Chinese leaders shared his view that the situation in Syria is "very serious."

"I sincerely hope the members of the Security Council will be able to discuss with a sense of urgency and take collective action, with a sense of unity," Ban said. "We cannot go on like this way. So many people have lost their lives during such a long time.".

A commentary that ran Tuesday in the official People's Daily newspaper strongly opposed using force against Syria — a sign that China may again block the Western-backed resolution. It said "a political solution is the only way out of the Syrian problem."

Hague cautioned that the situation in Syria "is so grave and unpredictable that I don't think any option should be ruled out for the future."

In New York, Syria's main opposition group urged Russia to support the Western resolution, saying it was the last chance "to breathe life" into Annan's peace plan.

Bassma Kodmani, a Syrian National Council spokeswoman, told reporters that if the Security Council fails to act, Syria's opposition will consider other options — which she did not disclose — to protect the Syrian people. "These are under consideration at the moment with friends of Syria" in the region and internationally, she said.

Kodmani noted that the Syrian people have been calling for a no-fly zone, safe zones for delivering humanitarian aid and the arming of the Free Syrian Army.

She said she told Russia's U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin at a meeting earlier Tuesday that a Russian veto of a resolution threatening sanctions would be a "blank check to continue the violence."

U.N. Security Council Vetoes Syria Resolution

Πηγή: NJ
Feb 4 2012

The United Nations Security Council on Saturday vetoed a draft resolution that would have called for embattled Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to step down, according to the Associated Press.

The resolution was vetoed by Russia and China.

The vote came a day after activists said the Assad government murdered more than 200 protesters in the city of Homs.

Earlier on Saturday, President Obama called on Assad to step aside.

"Assad must halt his campaign of killing and crimes against his own people now," Obama said in a statement. "He must step aside and allow a democratic transition to proceed immediately."

UNSC members closer to agreement on revised Syria draft text

Πηγή: KUNA
Feb 2 2012

UNITED NATIONS, Feb 2 (KUNA) -- UN Security Council members, including Russia, said late Wednesday they made progress in examining an Arab-European draft resolution that would support the Arab League peace plan regarding the crisis in Syria, but conceded that "a lot of difficult issues" persist, even though a number of major amendments were introduced to allay Russia's concerns.

The detailed Arab League plan, which mainly requires President Bashar Al-Assad to hand over power to a deputy, and which was spelled out in the old draft resolution, has now been deleted from the new text at Russia's request.

The new version, obtained by KUNA, simply says the Council "fully supports the League of Arab States' 22 January 2012 decision to facilitate a political transition leading to a democratic, plural political system, "including through commencing a serious political dialogue between the Syrian government and the whole spectrum of the Syrian opposition under the Arab League's auspices, in accordance with the timetable set out by the League of Arab States." 

Also deleted from the new text is the "grave concern at the continued transfer of weapons into Syria which fuels the violence" and the call on Member States "to take necessary steps to prevent such flow of arms." Russia, the biggest supplier of weapons to Syria, wanted that paragraph deleted.

The new text would "note" Syria's "announced commitments" to reform, and "regret" the lack of progress in implementing those reforms.

"Emphasizing the need to resolve the current crisis in Syria peacefully, and stressing that nothing in this resolution compels states to resort to the use of force or the threat of force" has been replaced in the new text with "emphasizing its (Council's) intention to resolve the current political crisis in Syria peacefully without foreign military intervention," again to please Russia.

The new text would also note Russia's offer to host a meeting between the Syrian Government and the opposition in Moscow, in consultation with the Arab League.

It now decides to "review implementation" of this resolution, without mentioning Syria by name, within 21 days, instead of 15 days mentioned in the old version, and "in the event of non-compliance, to consider further measures, in consultation with the Arab League." Following three hours of private talks, Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin admitted to reporters that "we did make some progress, actually. 

We discussed both texts we have on the table, I think we have a much better understanding of what needs to be done for us to reach consensus. 

So I think it was a pretty good session." The two texts he was referring to are the current Arab-European draft resolution that Moscow has been rejecting, and the Russian draft he introduced to the Council in mid-December and which Council western members rejected as too weak.

US ambassador Susan Rice told reporters everybody is trying to approach this in a "rational way and that in itself is progress." "Today's discussions were conducted in a constructive and role-up-your sleeves manner. If that can continue, then there is a possibility that we will reach agreement. But there is no certainty. These are tough issues and there are issues of interest and principle that still divide the council so it is really too soon to know," she said.

"We have more work to do. It's way too soon in my judgment to know whether ultimately there will be agreement, but I think people are in the spirit of rolling up their sleeves and trying to get to work in a serious manner," she added.

She stressed that all of the changes that were discussed were in the context of reaching an "overall package. So none of them were taken in isolation." 

British Ambassador Mark Lyall Grant told reporters "we've made some progress today and clearly there is desire to try and get a text that can be adopted in the next two days. But there are a lot of difficult issues and we are not there yet. 

So negotiations are going to continue tomorrow (today)." He conceded that the language about the political transition in Syria is among the difficult issues the members are discussing. "For us the most fundamental part of this text has always been supporting the Arab League initiative and that is our bedrock, bottom line and that is what the purpose of the text is and we will insist it is in the final version," adding that the sponsors are still looking for a vote this week.

The No - Fly Zone Resolution in numbers

After accepting the US demand (27/2) as a perquisite for action to be taken (in an attempt to prevent a precedent that could see Americans prosecuted by the ICC for alleged crimes in other conflicts), that no one from an outside country that is not a member of the ICC (aka the mercenaries) can be prosecuted for their actions in Libya , finally on the March 17, the Security Council adopted the Resolution 1973. Demanding an immediate ceasefire in Libya, including an end to the current attacks against civilians, which it said might constitute “crimes against humanity”, imposed a ban on all flights in the country’s airspace and an arms embargo tightening sanctions on the Qaddafi regime and its supporters. Addmitetly, protecting civilians was the main goal of the resolution.

Mr. Edward C. Luck, IPI's Vice President for Research and Programs and a Special Adviser to the United Nations Secretary-General in an interview to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung headlined "We Don’t Want to Wait Until the Dead Bodies Pile Up," praised the Council's Action on Libya as a ''Historic'' Implementation of the "Responsibility to Protect" (R2P). As for the goal of the intervention he emphasized the role of protecting the population rejecting any regime change attempt. The R2P was accepted from the UN in 2005 authorizing a military intervention whenever the one of the following 4 reasons occur: danger of genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, or crimes against humanity. In case of Libya Mr. Luck stated that "there seemed to be crimes against humanity, that is, widespread and systematic attacks on the population with the knowledge of the authorities. The air attacks on peaceful protesters were outrageous (our emphasis). Nevertheless, the Security Council tried sanctions first - but the Qaddafi regime kept advancing. Finally, there was good reason to believe that a bloodbath in Benghazi was imminent. Answering if the UN had verified reports of widespread air attacks on peaceful protesters he said: "There are videos that suggest that such attacks have taken place. But the concept of RtoP rests on prevention: We don’t want to wait until dead bodies pile up and we can clinically prove exactly what happened, instead we seek to intervene soon enough to prevent mass violence. Colonel Qaddafi called the protesters “cockroaches.” That is what the perpetrators of the genocide in Rwanda called the Tutsis before they massacred them".

Interestingly, the ICC's related report "PUBLIC REDACTED Version Prosecutor’s Application Pursuant to Article 58 as to Muammar Mohammed Abu Minyar GADDAFI, Saif Al‐Islam GADDAFI and Abdullah AL‐SENUSSI" doesn't contain a single reference of the alleged air attacks. Since about the ICC and the R2P we have written elsewhere in the following we are going to give a picture of how widely the Resolution 1973 was supported worldwide.

There are currently 193 member states in the UN, including every internationally recognised sovereign state in the world but the Vatican City.

The Security Council (SC) is made up of 15 member states, consisting of 5 permanent members China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States and 10 non-permanent members holding the seat for two years term, currently Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Colombia, Gabon, Germany, India, Lebanon, Nigeria, Portugal, South Africa. The five permanent members are the only to hold veto power over substantive resolutions like the one of military intervention. It is known that the UN adopted the resolution 1973 by a vote of 10 in favour to none against, with 5 abstentions (Brazil, China, Germany, India, Russian Federation).

In the follow tables you can see the percentage of the countries that voted in favour in three different ways: as a percentage of the total voting states of the SC, of the world population and of the number of the Total of the UN Member States (TUNMS).

Permanent Members holding veto power percentage of world population (WP) 

China 19.32%
France 0,95%
UK 0,9%
Russia 2,06%
US 4,5%

Total 22,37% of the WP or 2,59% of the total UN state members (193)


Current Non Permanent Members percentage of WP

Herzegovina 0,055%
Brazil 2,75%
Colombia 0,66%
Gabon 0,022%
Germany 1,18%
India 17,45%
Lebanon 0,061%
Nigeria 2,28%
Portugal 0,15%
South Africa 0,73%

Total 25.358% of the WP or 5,18% of the total UN (193) state members.

So the Grand Total of the present Security Council's (SC) 15 members represent the 47,728% of the World's population or the 7,77% of the TUNMS.

Subtracting the population and the number of the 5 abstentions (Brazil, China, Germany, India, Russian Federation) we finally come to that the states voted in favour representing the 66,6% of the SC states (ten out of fifteen) at the same time represent the 4,968% of the WP and the 5,18% of the Total UN state members.

While so far France did violate the UN embargo providing arms to the rebels, NATO is currently killing civilians and tried to kill Qaddafi obviously in a regime change attempt, this operation presented as having a wide support and celebrated as a historic implementation of the R2P in fact was accepted by votes representing only the 4,968% of the World population or the 5,18% of the total number of the UN member states. With ether percentage a political party would barely manage to find a couple of seats into a National Parliament. So widely supported...

The Role of the UN Security Council in Unleashing an Illegal War against Libya

Πηγή: Global Research

by Ronda Hauben
July 24, 2011


Journalists Question Security Council Support for Rebel Group

At the April 4 press conference marking the beginning of the Colombian Presidency of the Security Council for April, Nestor Osorio, the Colombian Ambassador to the United Nations was asked what on the surface would seem an unusual question by one of the journalists. The journalist said (1):

“In the wake of Security Council Resolution 1973 [authorizing military action against Libya–ed] are we to expect a more aggressive and proactive posture on the part of the Security Council in supporting rebel groups?”

The journalist gave several examples of such rebel groups as the IRA in the UK, ETA in Spain and perhaps the Corsican rebels in France. Another journalist added the example of the FARC in Colombia.

The question referred to the fact that with SC Resolution 1973, the UN Security Council had taken on to support an armed insurgency fighting against the government of a member nation of the UN.

The Colombian Ambassador responded that SC Resolution 1973 had not been adopted to support the rebels in Libya, but a rebel group which started out as civilians who had now become the core of the armed rebellion. The reason the Security Council had taken up the issue of Libya, he said, was because a member of the Security Council, Lebanon, had brought the issue to the Security Council. Ambassador Osorio added that the Arab League had asked for concrete action from the Security Council on Libya.

Is it, as Ambassador Osorio proposed, that the issue of Libya was taken up by the Security Council because Lebanon, a member of the Security Council, brought the issue to the attention of the other members? Is it that the Security Council was just deferring to the expertise of the Arab League, which the Colombian Ambassador presented as the relevant regional organization with respect to Libya?

The Colombian Ambassador’s remarks raise the question of how the Security Council made the decision to approve SC Resolution 1970 against Libya, the first of two resolutions on the issue. Was it as the Colombian Ambassador claimed because of a recommendation from the appropriate regional group, or was there a more complex process at work? Also, significantly in this situation, there were actually two conflicting recommendations to the Security Council from two groups, one from the Arab League, which is not a geographical regional group but is organized on some other basis, and the other from the geographic regional group that Libya is part of, from the African Union.

What were the factors that influenced the Security Council decisions first, to pass Security Council Resolution 1970 authorizing stringent sanctions, including a referral of Libyan officials to the International Criminal Court (ICC) and then, subsequently, to pass SC Resolution 1973, which authorized a no-fly zone and other military action? Ultimately these decisions set the basis for the NATO military alliance to join with the armed insurgency fighting against the government of Libya.