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25Jul12
Russia Hits Out at West's 'Chilling' Syria Stance
Russia accused Western powers on Wednesday of encouraging terrorism over their refusal to condemn the suicide bombing that killed Syria's defense minister last week.
"In other words, they are saying: 'We will continue to support such terrorist acts until the UN Security Council does what we want it to," Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told journalists. "This is a chilling position."
Four top Syrian security officials, including Defense Minister Dawoud Rajha, were killed when a rebel suicide bomber managed to infiltrate the government building where they were meeting in the capital, Damascus, on July 18.
The United States envoy to the UN, Susan Rice, said after the bombing that the attack was further proof of the necessity to adopt a Security Council resolution against the regime of embattled Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Syrian-based rights activists say some 16,000 have been killed since the start of an uprising against Assad in March 2011.
Russia and China vetoed a Western-backed UN resolution on Syria on July 19 over fears that it would lead to foreign military intervention in the Middle East country, a stance that United States envoy to the United Nations Susan Rice called "paranoid if not disingenuous."
The resolution was tied to Chapter 7 of the UN Charter, which would have provided for the use of force to put an end to the rapidly escalating conflict.
This was the third time that Russia and China had vetoed a UN resolution on Syria.
Russia says it has no special interest in seeing Assad remain in power, but that the "Syrian people" should decide his fate. And Russian President Vladimir Putin vowed earlier this year not to allow a repeat of the "Libya scenario" which saw the ouster and murder of long-time Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi after a NATO military campaign.
Speaking as fighting continued to rage in both Damascus and Syria's second city of Aleppo, Lavrov also criticized new unilateral European Union sanctions against Syria introduced on Monday.
Russia's Foreign Ministry said earlier in the day that the sanctions were "counter-productive" and "incapable of resolving the situation in Syria."
EU foreign ministers decided at Monday's meeting in Brussels to introduce rules obliging the organization's 27 member states to search airplanes and ships suspected of carrying weapons to Syria. Assets freezes and visa bans were also introduced against Syrian officials.
[Source: Ria Novosti, Moscow, 25Jul12]
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