FROM EIR DAILY ALERT
UN Security Council Confrontation over U.S.-U.K.-France Violation of UN Charter, International Law
April 14, 2018 (EIRNS)—Russia and China sharply rejected the unilateral military strike against the nation of Syria by the other three permanent members of the UN Security Council, denouncing it as a violation of the UN Charter and international law, during Saturday’s emergency UNSC meeting called by Russia. Their statements were met with dangerous arrogance and ridicule by the trio of UN mission ambassadors from the United States, the United Kingdom, and France.
Russia presented a short resolution condemning “the aggression against the Syrian Arab Republic by the United States and its allies, which violates international law and the UN Charter,” demanding all such aggression be halted “immediately and without any delay,” and not be repeated. Russia’s Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia called the military strike an act of “hooliganism in the international arena,” and: and not minor hooliganism, either, given that we are dealing with nuclear powers. The masks,—or rather the White Helmets—, he said, have already fallen. Now they are shifting blame to Russia. London, Paris and Washington are turning international diplomacy into “the diplomacy of the absurd,” creating myths, and then forcing people to accept them.
You destroyed the Barzeh Research Center in Damascus, Ambassador Nebenzia charged. This was a scientific facility used to build the economy. Do you want Syria to not have any economy? Are you trying to send Syria’s economy back to the Stone Age? To finish off what your sanctions have not finished off?
China, along with Bolivia, voted for the Russian resolution. Chinese Ambassador Ma Zhaoxu reiterated before and after the vote that China always opposes the use of military force and demands respect for sovereignty of the states, calling any unilateral action a violation of international law.
Nikki Haley, Karen Pierce and François Delattre, representing the U.S., U.K. and France, respectively, treated Russia as the enemy for defending a Syrian “regime” they assert “everyone knows” carries out chemical weapon attacks regularly. In her litany, Haley even raised the discredited charge that Russia carried out the Skripal poisoning.
The Queen’s representative, Pierce, justified the strike on the grounds of an alleged international right to humanitarian interventions (the infamous “Responsibility To Protect” doctrine). Russia never accepted that doctrine, Ambassador Nebenzia responded; the U.K. not only violates international law, it seeks to rewrite it. France’s Delattre rounded off the show with the announcement that the trio would be presenting a program to end the Syrian crisis, starting with an immediate, across the board ceasefire—the umpteenth attempt to protect the terrorists that are being driven out of Syria.
Several other ambassadors referenced UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres’ warning the day before that
“the Cold War is back with a vengeance, but with a difference. The mechanisms and the safeguards to manage the risks of escalation that existed in the past no longer seem to be present.”
That included Kazakhstan Ambassador Kairat Umarov, who warned the world is in danger, facing the threat of a deadly war on a global scale, because of this new “Cold War.”
