Russia, China reject UN move to rebuke Syrian president

[No Elephants]

Source: NBC, MSNBC and news services

Russia, China reject UN move to rebuke Syrian president
By NBC, msnbc.com and news services


Updated at 12 p.m. ET: Amid fresh bloodshed in the Syrian city of Homs, the U.N. Security Council on Saturday failed to pass a resolution calling on the Syrian president to step down.

Russia and China vetoed the resolution endorsing an Arab League call for Bashar Assad to leave power. The other 13 council members, including the U.S., France and Britain, voted in favor of the resolution.

The vote took place as Syrian forces pummeled the city of Homs with mortar and artillery fire that activists say killed more than 200 people in one of the bloodiest episodes of the uprising against Assad's regime. The U.N. says more than 5,400 people have been killed over almost 11 months in a Syrian government crackdown on civilian protests.

<snip>

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said it had not been possible to work constructively with Russia ahead of the vote. "I thought that there might be some ways to bridge, even at this last moment, a few of the concerns that the Russians had. I offered to work in a constructive manner to do so. That has not been possible,'' she told reporters at a security conference in Munich.

Read more: http://worldnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/02/04/10317567-russia-china-reject-un-move-to-rebuke-syrian-president

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Seriously, China and Russia, how callous can you be?


In London, demonstrators want to shut down the Syrian embassy. I wonder if Syria, China or Russia has a physical presence in Boston we can picket.

[rpannier]

1. To play Devil's Advocate

Given how quickly the US, UK and France violated the UN agreement on the 'No-Fly Zone' in Libya, I might have done the same thing
Also, given the Arab League Memberships everyday ruthless behavior towards its own citizens (not to mention Saudi in Bahrain), they have little moral authority on this topic

[No Elephants]

2. True enough, but who does have moral authority on this topic?

I have little doubt if the people in the US tried to revolt and members of the U.S. military starting defecting to join them, Assad would start looking like a humanitarian.

Ditto Russia and China, if their people behaved as the Syrian people are behaving. Yet, they have all voted for resolutions censuring other nations.

So, moral authority is not the issue for me.

The issue, for me, is whether a resolution might have helped. And whether, by refusing to vote for one, the Soviet Union and China have cloaked Assad with a veneer of at least arguable legitimacy.

[No Elephants]

3. Too late to edit, but I just happened on an article about why Russia and China have been refusing.

(Found it while I was browsing the cnn site for newer articles to post in LBN and GD.)

http://www.cnn.com/2012/02/05/world/meast/syria-china-russia-relations/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

Not to say that the article is gospel, but it does attribute monetary issues, like arms sales from Russia and imports by Syria from China in general.

An excerpt:

"Analysts say both China and Russia have their reasons to maintain good relations with Syria.

Russia is one of Syria's biggest arms suppliers. And China ranked as Syria's third-largest importer in 2010, according to data from the European Commission."

[The Stranger]

4. Oh Jeez. Please don't turn to that shitbag CNN. Here's some decent journalism.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/NB07Ad01.html

If a date needs to fixed marking the end of "post-Soviet era" in world politics, it might fall on February 4, 2012. Russia and China's double veto of the Arab League resolution on Syria in the United Nations Security Council constitutes a watershed event.

Curiously, the secretary general of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Anders Fogh Rasmussen chose the same day as the veto in New York to snub Russia; saying that that the alliance would have the first elements of the US's missile defense system (ABM) up and running in Europe by the alliance's summit in May in Chicago, no matter Moscow's objections.

The first double veto by Russia and China on the Syrian issue in the United Nations Security Council last October was a coordinated move that sought to scuttle a resolution that might be seized by the Western alliance to mount a military operation in Syria. But the repeat double veto on a motion pressing Syria's President Bashar al-Assad to abandon power conveys a much bigger meaning.