Haaretz
The UN Security Council on Friday was discussing an Arab League-backed plan to respond to the crisis in Syria, diplomats said as they headed into the closed-door consultations.
French Ambassador Gerard Araud said council members expected a presentation by the Moroccan ambassador, whose country joined the council this month.
Araud said a new Arab-European draft resolution reflecting the Arab League’s demands on Syria would be introduced, and he hoped that it would be voted on next week. “We have waited too long,” he said.
The UN says at least 5,400 have been killed in a months-long Syrian government crackdown on civilian protests.
European diplomats have been meeting this week with diplomats from Arab countries, including Morocco and Qatar, on a resolution that would strongly back an Arab League bid to end the crisis.
“There is now a chance that the Security Council will finally take a clear stand on Syria. That is long overdue,” German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said Friday at the General Affairs Council in Brussels. The comments were provided by the German mission to journalists at the UN.
On Tuesday, the Arab League secretary-general and Qatar’s prime minister will brief the Security Council on the situation in Syria.
“We hope now that council members will seize this new window of opportunity and find common ground,” German Ambassador Peter Wittig said.
But approval was far from guaranteed.
Permanent council members Russia and China used their veto powers last fall to block an earlier European resolution on Syria. On Friday, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov was quoted by the ITAR-Tass news agency as saying Moscow will oppose a new draft UN resolution on Syria because it fails to take Kremlin’s concerns into account.
South African Ambassador Baso Sangqu said it was important that supporters of the resolution assure other countries, including his, that the draft was not a plan for regime change.
Russia and some other countries believe NATO misused last year’s Security Council’s resolutions on Libya as a pretext for regime change in that nation.
Russia has been a strong ally of Syria since Soviet times, when the country was led by the president’s father Hafez Assad, and has long supplied Syria with aircraft, missiles, tanks and other modern weapons.
The new Arab-European draft resolution on Syria, obtained by The Associated Press, expresses support of the Arab League’s Jan. 22 decision “to facilitate a political transition leading to a democratic, plural political system.”
The draft does not mention sanctions, but calls for the adoption of unspecified “further measures, in consultation with the League of Arab States,” if Syria does not comply within 15 days.
The draft also condemns the “continued widespread and gross violations of human rights and fundamental freedoms by the Syrian authorities” and demands that the Syrian government immediately stop all human rights violations.
Russia’s UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said a European-Arab draft resolution on Syria circulated to the U.N. Security Council on Friday was unacceptable in parts, but Russia was ready to “engage” on it.
The Arab League earlier this month sent observers to Syria, but the mission was widely criticized for failing to stop the violence. Gulf states led by Saudi Arabia pulled out of the mission Tuesday, asking the Security Council to intervene because the Syrian government has not halted its crackdown.
The head of Arab League observers in Syria said in a statement that violence in the country has spiked over the past few days. Sudanese Gen. Mohammed Ahmed Dabi said the cities of Homs, Hama and Idlib have all witnessed a “very high escalation” in violence since Tuesday.
The United Nations says more than 5,000 people have been killed in a 10-month crackdown on anti-government protesters.
#1 by ruby22shoes on January 28, 2012 - 4:29 pm
The elephant in the room is Israel. There is no doubt whatsoever that Israel routinely violates human rights and fundamental freedoms of the Palestinian peoples, Christian and Muslim as well as Ethiopian Jews, migrant workers, sex slaves and any with darker skin tone than the Europeans.
I’m not saying that 5,400 deaths are to be scoffed at, I’m saying the occupation that has existed for seventy some years presents a clearer case, more evidence and war criminals traveling the world with impunity.
The article says the Arab League mission is not about regime change.
Not about regime change? Not about ridding the area of Bashar Assad,
How stupid do they think the world is?
It is all about removing Bashar Al Assad & plunder & getting the ducks in a row to attempt the toppling of Iran. In other words two + two = four.
#2 by Adalberto Erazo on January 28, 2012 - 4:51 pm
Speaking of the UN, looks as though they found cocaine there. This raises a lot of questions.
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/223462.html
#3 by galwayspaniard on January 28, 2012 - 5:17 pm
Sometimes when I wonder if I know so little of what goes on in world events, I simply recall how wrong we were with psychopaths like Robert McNamara and LBJ leading us in Vietnam or Cheney/Rumsfeld and neocon zionists guiding us through Afghanistan and Iraq, and current so called leaders like Hilary Clinton, and also Bill Clinton destroying the Serb infrastructure in late 1990s, then I realize we commoners are not so stupid after all.
I guess a lot of psychopaths engineer their way to power.
People find it hard to believe in a spiritual realm but through work of physicists and nonphony mystics, I have had to conclude there is a spiritual realm and a supreme being, and thus an evil presence which we have called devils. I am again reviewing the life of Jesus and the authority with which He spoke.
Why it is like this is something most of us ask.
The killing and misery in Syria is related to all the other sordid events of past ten years.
#4 by rehmat1 on January 28, 2012 - 5:45 pm
Anti-Assad are the same pro-Israeli anti-Muslim groups who succeeded in fooling the world against Libyan leader Qaddafi.
The Geneva-based pro-Israel Jewish pressure group UN Watch was the first NGO to throw its propaganda lies against Qaddafi. In February 2011, UN Watch blackmailed 70 so-called “human right groups” to send a letter to Israel-Firsters Barack Obama, EU’s Catherine Ashton and UN’s Ban Ki-Moon demanding military action against Libya by invoking the “Responsibility to Protect” doctrine. Now, the UN Watch is repeating the same demand against Syria. Zionist Jew Carl Gershman, president of Congress-funded Israel lobby group ‘National Endowment for Democracy’, was one of signatories of the UN Watch letter.
Former FBI translator, Sibel Edmond, in an with Russia Today (RT) on December 16, had claimed that Washington is arming the anti-government rebels in Syria.
http://rehmat1.wordpress.com/2012/01/20/a-setback-to-zionists-regime-change-in-syria/
#5 by Ingrid B on January 29, 2012 - 4:16 am
“Russia has been a strong ally of Syria since Soviet times, when the country was led by the president’s father Hafez Assad, and has long supplied Syria with aircraft, missiles, tanks and other modern weapons.” :
and why wouldn`t they? Syria must be allowed to defend herself from those who are being supplied with weapons by her enemies..
[“to facilitate a political transition leading to a democratic, plural political system.”
“further measures, in consultation with the League of Arab States,”
“continued widespread and gross violations of human rights and fundamental freedoms by the Syrian authorities”] :
Gulf states led by Saudi Arabia, the League of Arab States, should clean up their own mess, Syria is in trouble, precisely because of them..
#6 by Flipper on January 29, 2012 - 4:21 am
0 refuses to stop using internationally banned phosphorus bombs in future mass-murders
#7 by Jesse Dahl on January 29, 2012 - 4:27 pm
Assalaamu Alaikum
Attention all Christians and Muslims worthy of the title.
We are not the enemies of God. God’s enemy is our enemy.
Unrepentant Israel , and the Synagogue of Satan is our enemy.
Wasalam
[doHTML]][youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_p4P3LzyOE&w=420&h=315/doHTML