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Derechos | Equipo Nizkor
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Derechos | Equipo Nizkor
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27Sep12
Lavrov on Syria: "Inactivity incites terror"
Refusal to apply the Geneva agreements on Syria reached on June 30, 2012 puts at risk the implementation of the key principles outlined by the UN Security Council in the fight against terror. The participants in a high-level UNSC meeting on the Middle East on Wednesday voiced different approaches to the situation in Syria.
The Syrian crisis has remained the thorniest Middle Eastern issue for more than a year. Meanwhile, all major UNSC member states had expressed their views on the situation before the UN General Assembly session opened in New York on Tuesday. US leader Barack Obama again stressed that peace will come to Syria only after President Bashar Assad resigns. French President Francois Hollande urged the UN to take active steps in Syria and protect the areas controlled by the opposition. Not only Syrians have found themselves directly or indirectly involved in the conflict. Only a consolidated approach can result help in finding the right solution, Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said:
"To a great extent the ongoing violence in Syria should be blamed on the countries that incite anti-Assad forces to deny a ceasefire and seek a change of regime. Actually, this approach hardly differs from the principles of terrorism applied by the armed opposition groups."
The French president accused the UNSC of inactivity which often looks somehow 'selective'. The attacks which rocked Syria in the past two months were not in any way condemned by the UNSC. Speaking to journalists, Sergei Lavrov spoke about the decision of some countries to revise the Geneva agreements:
"It is important that all participants in the Geneva session adhere to what they had signed up to. Some of Russia's Western partners condemn the attacks but then say that although 'terrorism is evil there is no other way to people in Syria to topple the bloody regime'. This is a very dangerous position which looks as if they were justifying terrorism."
The final communiqué of the Action Group for Syria has been approved by the permanent members of the Security Council, the League of the Arab States, Turkey, the EU and the UN Secretary General. However, for some countries this document is just a piece of paper.
It was not originally planned to adopt any resolution on Syria at the latest session of the Security Council. The Russian delegation pointed out that no resolution was required for starting a dialogue on the basis of the principles of the Geneva Communique. Russia's partners in BRICS share this opinion. Among five BRICS member-states, Russia and China are permanent members of the UNSC. The BRICS member-states adopted a joint resolution at the UN General Assembly session.
"The joint declaration of the Foreign Ministers of the BRICS countries objectively estimates the ways of solving the Syrian crisis and supports the Geneva Communique as a basis for these actions. This is a good basis for reaching a consensus in the UN Security Council, the current absence of which is so saddening for some of our colleagues."
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon also stressed that there was no military solution to the Syrian crisis and the unsettled conflict was a threat to the security of the entire region.
The UNSC member-states pointed out that changes currently taking place in the Middle East were only the beginning of the road. New conflicts will be looming large if political reforms are not carried through, which is impossible without modernizing the economy and the social sphere.
The Syrian problem is not the only one in the region. No substantial achievements are evident in solving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict either.
"Russia is insistently calling for stepping up the efforts of the 'quartet' of Middle Eastern intermediaries in close cooperation with the League of Arab States to speedily resume the Palestinian-Israeli talks. We believe that the 'quartet's inability to organize a ministers' meeting at the current UN General Assembly session is a serious mistake."
It was said in the corridors of the UN General Assembly that the meeting of the intermediaries in the Palestinian-Israeli settlement did not take place because the US was against it.
[Source: By Olga Denisova, Voice of Russia, Moscow, 27Sep12]
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