Western countries and Syrian opposition reacted angrily to the decision of Russia and China to block the U.N. Security Council resolution on Syria. The vote took place last Saturday. As reported by Interfax , United States Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice called the results of the vote “disgusting”. “These members (Russia and China) stand behind empty arguments and individual interests while delaying and seeking to strip bare any text that would pressure Assad to change his actions,” Rice said. Los Angeles Times quotes US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, warning that after the failure of the resolution the situation in Syria could degenerate into “a brutal civil war.” Syrian opposition took the UN Security Council veto as a “licence for kill” handed to Assad’s regime.
As reported by Kommersant, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that his country, in particular, is not happy “with the extreme specifics in the part of demands to the regime and, on the contrary, the blur of formulations when describing actions of armed groups that are engaged also in intimidation of people also violating human rights and attacking public offices.” Lavrov and head of Russian foreign intelligence Mikhail Fradkov will visit Damascus on February 7 and meet with Bashar Assad. The Chinese, as reported by BBC , consider forced regime change in Syria erroneous reminding that similar actions in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya led to no good. The last statement is difficult to dispute.
Aram Abrahamyan
