UNITED NATIONS - Pakistan called on the UN Security Council Tuesday to ensure respect for Syria's sovereignty and territorial integrity as the 15-nation body met to consider action to deal with the escalating violence in the Arab country.
Ambassador Abdullah Hussain Haroon, the Pakistani permanent representative to the United Nations, also proposed during a closed-door meeting of the Council that the Arab League monitors, who are in Syria to assess the situation, be allowed to complete their mission, diplomat said.
The United States and some of its allies are pushing for the immediate imposition of sanction of sanctions and other punitive measures against the Syrian government.
Haroon, who spoke after a briefing on the situation in Syria by U.N Under Secretary General for Political Affairs Lynn Pascoe, cautioned against taking any hasty decision.
Pascoe, citing figures compiled by the UN office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights on the basis of accounts by Syrian and international human rights groups, told the Council that more than 400 people had died since the Arab League deployed its team of monitors in Syria on Dec. 27.
In his remarks, the Pakistan envoy said every effort should be made to get a credible figure of the casualties before taking any decision.
The US ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, claimed that the rate of killings, about 40 per day, marked an intensification of the crackdown by President Bashar al-Assad’s government since the period preceding the Arab League initiative.
“Syria, rather than using the opportunity of its commitment to the Arab League to end the violence and fulfill all of its commitments, is stepping up the violence despite the presence of monitors,” Rice said.
Rice said the United States is concerned by “reports that at least two of the monitors of the Arab League today — two Kuwaitis — were roughed up, harmed, harassed, hurt, in the context of their work.”
Syria’s UN ambassador, Bashar al-Jaafari, countered that the attacks on the Arab monitors were carried out by armed opposition forces, not by pro-government forces. “There is no Syrian interest whatsoever to harm the credibility and the safety and the security of the Arab envoys,” he said.
But most council members, including France, said that the Council would need to wait until the Arab League filed a formal report on its findings in Syria before considering any fresh action. “Everybody agrees that for the moment the only game in town in political terms is the Arab League mediation,” French Ambassador Gerard Araud told reporters.
The Security Council has been unable to act on Syria since early October, when China and Russia vetoed a Western-backed resolution threatening possible sanctions against Damascus if it did not stop the violence.
Last month, Russia introduced its own resolution calling for political talks between the government and the opposition. But it has since put that initiative on hold until the Arab League concludes its assessment on Jan. 19.
Russia’s UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said any council action before the Arab League’s Jan. 19 meeting is unlikely, adding that in any case the council would probably take its cue from the Arab League and is conclusions from its Syria mission.
“Patience may be the key word now,” Churkin told reporters outside the Security Council. Pakistan has already indicated that it supports the Russian approach on Syria.