Thursday, August 25, 2011

Moscow and Beijing boycott UN Security Council meeting on Syria

alarabiya.net
Moscow and Beijing boycotted a closed-door meeting for the Security Council on Thursday that was supposed to discuss a draft resolution on Syria, Al Arabiya reported.

The envoys of Russia and China to the United Nations boycotted the meeting, which aimed at discussing a draft resolution that would impose further sanctions and travel bans against 22 Syrian officials as well as freezing the assets of 23 other top regime figures, including President Bashar al-Assad himself, Al Arabiya correspondent said.

The sanctions were supposed to hit four Syrian companies as well, according to Al Arabiya correspondent.

Western delegations hope to put the draft resolution to a vote in the 15-nation Security Council as soon as possible. The sanctions are the Western nations' response to Damascus' five-month crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators, which the United Nations says has left 2,200 civilians dead.

The draft resolution “strongly condemns the continued grave and systematic human rights violations by the Syrian authorities, such as arbitrary executions, excessive use of force and the killing and persecution of protesters and human rights defenders, arbitrary detention, enforced disappearances, torture and ill-treatment of detainees, also of children, and expresses profound regret at the deaths of thousands of people including children.”

The resolution “demands an immediate end to the violence” and “recalls that those responsible for violence should be held accountable.”

Assad leads a list of 23 individuals and four entities named in the draft document who would be subject to an asset freeze. The president is not on the 22-name list for a proposed travel ban however.

Others targeted for sanctions include Assad's brother Maher, commander of the army's 4th armored division, which is said to have played a key role in suppressing protests, Vice President Farouq al-Shara, and Assad's cousin Rami Makhlouf, a tycoon who controls Syria's biggest cellphone firm Syriatel.

Among the other individuals on the sanctions list are the defense minister and several senior intelligence officials.

The resolution would impose sanctions on Syria's General Intelligence Directorate and three companies that it says provide funding for the government. One of the firms, the Military Housing Establishment, is partly controlled by the Syrian defense ministry, the resolution says.

Russia, which has veto-power, had earlier said it does not think sanctioning Damascus is the right approach at the moment.

China said that it believed there should be more dialogue.

Security Council resolutions need nine backers and no veto to be passed. The United States, France and Britain are also permanent members with veto power.

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