Russia and China face criticism for backing 'violent' Syrian regime
Source: Independent
World leaders and Syria's newly formed opposition
movement united to condemn Russia and China yesterday for vetoing an
attempt to up the pressure against President Bashar al-Assad if he
failed to rein in his violent crackdown on anti-regime protesters.
The rejection of a UN Security Council resolution
that threatened sanctions against the Baathist regime late on Tuesday
came despite EU nations watering-down a previous draft to try to win
Russian and Chinese support. Moscow and Beijing have economic and
strategic interests tied up in Syria.
The US and
EU have already issued numerous sanctions targeting Baathist leaders.
Last month European governments struck an agreement banning imports of
Syrian oil – a blow to Damascus, which had sold virtually all of its oil
supplies to the EU. Yet the failure to reach a UN consensus will give
succour to Mr Assad's regime, which would have been under enormous
pressure if Russia and China had decided to rubber stamp the sanctions.
Turkey's Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said
his country would plough ahead with its own sanctions against the
Syrian regime. "Turkey and either some or all of the European Union
nations, and who knows which others, will take steps," he said.
Addressing
the Conservative Party conference in Manchester yesterday, the Foreign
Secretary William Hague said Moscow and Beijing had made the wrong
decision. "The decision of Russia and China to veto this resolution and
to side with a brutal regime rather than the people of Syria is deeply
mistaken," he said.
His French counterpart,
Alain Juppe, issued an unusually angry statement which denounced Mr
Assad as a "dictator who is massacring" his own people and pledged
support for the Syrian opposition. The failure was also met with dismay
from activists as well as members of the Syrian National Council (SNC),
the political opposition movement established this week in a bid to help
topple Mr Assad.
"We're disappointed," Molham
al-Drobi, a Muslim Brotherhood member who sits on the SNC's secretarial
committee, said. "By taking this action [Russia and China] are actually
causing more deaths and more bloodshed around the country." An activist
called Osama from the Syrian city of Homs told The Independent he was
"shocked and disgusted" by Russia and China. "We feel that they are now
officially partners in the crime against us," he said.
Moscow
has a long-standing strategic relationship with Damascus, its last
remaining toehold in the Middle East. The Russian military has a
Soviet-era base on Syria's Mediterranean coast, while previous Communist
governments propped up the President's father with large loans and also
helped develop the country's modern infrastructure.
But
Frederic Volpi, a Syria expert from the University of St Andrews, said
Tuesday's vote also marked a Russian and Chinese "backlash" in response
to Nato's recent campaign in Libya. The Russians and Chinese governments
had a good relationship with Colonel Gaddafi," he said. "But the
outcome of regime change seems to be that there is a new government
which is much more pro-Western and far less likely to do deals with
them. If the Libya scenario were to occur in Syria, they would not get
anything out of it."
In spite of the failure to
reach an agreement at the Security Council, some analysts still believe
there are ways to pile pressure on Mr Assad. The Syrian economy is
sagging heavily as a result of the crackdown, which human-rights groups
say has killed more than 2,700 civilians since March.
Last
month, the IMF revised its growth forecast for 2011, saying the economy
would shrink by 2 per cent as opposed to the 3 per cent hike predicted
in April. Catherine Ashton, EU foreign policy chief, said leaders would
continue to apply pressure to the Syrian regime.
Contentious UN vetoes
Zimbabwe, 2008
Russia
and China vetoed proposed UN sanctions that aimed to penalise President
Robert Mugabe over the use of violence against civilians during
Zimbabwe's elections in 2008. The resolution, backed by nine other
nations including the UK and US, called for an arms embargo, as well as
financial and travel restrictions on Mr Mugabe and other regime leaders.
The arms embargo would have hit Russian and Chinese weapons exporters.
Israel, 2006
The
US vetoed a UN Security Council resolution that demanded Israel halt
its attacks in Gaza in 2006. The proposal also called for Palestinian
militants to release an Israeli soldier who had been kidnapped in Israel
earlier that year and ordered that rockets should not be launched at
Israel from Gaza. Ten nations had voted in favour. In 2002, the US also
blocked a draft resolution that criticised the killing of several UN
employees by Israeli forces and the destruction of a World Food
Programme warehouse in the West Bank.
Iraq, 2003
France
and Russia signalled that they would veto a new resolution sanctioning
war in Iraq in 2003, which led the US, UK and Spain to withdraw their
draft and go to war without explicit UN backing.
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