UNITED NATIONS - The UN Security Council met behind closed doors Friday to discuss a Western-Arab draft resolution on Syria, but the 15-nation body remained divided on how the deal with the crisis there.
Russia’s UN envoy Vitaly Churkin told reporters after the meeting in New York that the draft resolution was unacceptable in parts, but his delegation was ready to engage in talks about it.
Russia and China vetoed a previous draft resolution against Syria late last year. Morocco, the only Arab country on the Security Council, submitted the draft resolution to the council, which was jointly drawn up by Arab states with Britain, France and Germany. The Council is due to resume its consultations next week.
In Moscow, Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov said Friday that the draft does not take into consideration “our position” and is missing “key aspects that are fundamental to us,” reports said.
Also on Friday, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who is in Davos, Switzerland, called on the Security Council to speak with one voice on Syria, and urged Damascus to listen to the aspirations of its people.
On Monday, Syria rejected a proposal by Arab League foreign ministers that President Bashar al-Assad of Syria hand over power to a deputy and set up new unity government, saying that the plan was part of a “conspiracy against Syria.”
The secretary-general of the Arab League, Nabil al-Arabi and Quatari Prime Minister Sheik Hamad bin Jassim Al-Thani are to head to New York on Saturday to seek support for an Arab plan on Syria, reports said.
Syria has insisted that the turmoil in the country is plotted by terrorists and foreign-backed armed gangs. The Syrian government said that more than 2,000 army and security personnel were killed during the unrest, while the United Nations put the death toll in the country at more than 5,000.
Syria was plunged into turmoil in Mid-March last year when anti- government protests broke out. Damascus signed the Arab League observer protocol on Dec. 19, 2011 in Cairo after the Arab League threatened to take the issue to the Security Council.
Syria’s UN Ambassador Bashar Ja’afari expressed his country’s opposition to the new draft resolution saying that “Syria will not be Libya.”
Russia has been a strong ally of Syria since Soviet times, when the country was led by the president’s father Hafez Assad, and has long supplied Syria with aircraft, missiles, tanks and other modern weapons.
The new Arab-European draft resolution on Syria expresses support of the Arab League’s Jan. 22 decision “to facilitate a political transition leading to a democratic, plural political system.”
The draft does not explicitly mention sanctions, but calls for the adoption of unspecified “further measures, in consultation with the League of Arab States,” if Syria does not comply within 15 days.
The draft also condemns the “continued widespread and gross violations of human rights and fundamental freedoms by the Syrian authorities” and demands that the Syrian government immediately stop all human rights violations.
The Arab League earlier this month sent observers to Syria, but the mission was widely criticized for failing to stop the violence. Gulf states led by Saudi Arabia pulled out of the mission Tuesday, asking the Security Council to intervene because the Syrian government has not halted its crackdown.