{"id":62758,"date":"2018-04-11T06:08:46","date_gmt":"2018-04-11T06:08:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/?p=62758"},"modified":"2018-04-11T06:08:46","modified_gmt":"2018-04-11T06:08:46","slug":"us-warning-at-the-un-the-world-must-see-justice-done-on-syria","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/world-news\/us-warning-at-the-un-the-world-must-see-justice-done-on-syria.html","title":{"rendered":"US warning at the UN: ‘The world must see justice done’ on Syria"},"content":{"rendered":"

US warning at the UN: ‘The world must see justice done’ on Syria<\/span><\/strong><\/h2>\n

As President Donald Trump on Monday warned he soon would be making \u201cmajor decisions\u201d to respond \u201cforcefully\u201d to murderous suspected chemical attacks against civilians in the rebel-held Syrian town of Douma, the stakes for the United Nations in the made-in-Syria crisis were just as high.<\/span><\/p>\n

Nikki Haley, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., passionately outlined the challenge for the world organization at an emergency meeting of the Security Council, called to debate what to do next about the April 7 chemical assault by the regime of Bashar al-Assad.<\/span><\/p>\n

The attack is believed to have killed more than 40 people, including numerous women and children, and left perhaps 100 more injured.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe have reached the moment when the world must see justice done,\u201d Haley warned. \u201cThere can be no more rationalizations for our failure to act.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cHistory will record this,\u201d she declared, \u201cas the moment when the Security Council either discharged its duty or demonstrated its utter and complete failure to protect the people of Syria.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cEither way,\u201d Haley summarized, \u201cthe U.S. will respond.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

What that U.S. action will be, and when it will occur, Trump promised to reveal shortly, though \u201cafter the fact,\u201d as he told journalists.<\/span><\/p>\n

But the U.N.\u2019s haplessness in confronting chemical assaults and numerous other war crimes by Assad\u2019s forces, backed by Russian warplanes and Iranian-supported militias, has reached its own high-water mark, culminating in the emergency Council session and anything that occurs after it.<\/span><\/p>\n

As a result of that cynical war of attrition behind diplomatic cover, \u201cthe U.N. is worse than meaningless,\u201d Frederick Kagan, resident scholar and director of the Critical Threats project at the American Enterprise Institute, told Fox News days in advance of the latest chemical attack. \u201cIt is allowing itself to be manipulated as cover for atrocities and war crimes.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Kagan called diplomats \u201cfoolishly na\u00efve\u201d for accepting previous resolutions that endorsed a tattered ceasefire and virtually non-existent \u201cde-escalation zones\u201d that Assad and his backers had repeatedly violated at will.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe Russians always intended to violate them,\u201d he said.<\/span><\/p>\n

Yesterday at the Security Council, Haley essentially agreed. Charging that the hands of Putin\u2019s regime \u201cwere all covered in the blood of Syrian civilians,\u201d she declared. \u201cRussia could stop this senseless slaughter if it wanted. But it stands with the Assad regime and supports [it] without any hesitation.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

For his part, Russian Ambassador to the U.N. Vassiley Nebenzia denied outright that anything at all had happened.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cOur military radiological, biological chemical unit was on site of the alleged chemical accident,\u201d he told the Council. \u201cIt confirmed there was no chemical substances found \u2014 no bodies, no poisoned people in hospitals, doctors in Douma denied that anyone was coming to hospital.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Some diplomats took the statement to mean that the area already had been scrubbed of chemical residues.<\/span><\/p>\n

The tenuous, Security Council-endorsed 30-day ceasefire that ultimately was shredded by Assad\u2019s air raids and military attacks in the rebellious suburban region of eastern Ghouta, in which Douma also is located, already has known countless violations of humanitarian law.<\/span><\/p>\n

The assaults have including numerous alleged chlorine gas attacks as well as bombing raids on civilian hospitals and other vulnerable areas, which have been a signature tactic of Assad\u2019s forces, and those of his allies, for years. In recent weeks the pounding in eastern Ghouta left hundreds dead and unknown numbers injured.<\/span><\/p>\n

Russia had joined in a unanimous endorsement of the ceasefire at the Security Council, but as Haley observed, immediately began violating it.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cRussian officials are on the ground helping direct the regime\u2019s \u2018starve and surrender\u2019 campaign,\u201d she declared, \u201cand Iranian allied forces do much of the dirty work. When the Syrian military pummels civilians, they rely on the military hardware given by Russia.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Diplomatic obstruction by Russian president Vladimir Putin whittled the ceasefire down to meaningless five-hour pauses in the Assad attacks until population centers in East Ghouta began to surrender. Their submission was followed by mass deportations of civilian residents, reports of summary executions, and a continuation of near-starvation conditions among survivors.<\/span><\/p>\n

Then, after a brief pause, the assault started again on Douma, culminating in the latest chemical massacre.<\/span><\/p>\n

What Haley and the U.S. were asking the U.N. Security Council to provide today is, in part, something the U.N. already had done less than a year ago \u2014 establish a \u201ctruly professional and impartial mechanism\u201d to investigate chemical weapons attacks in Syria as well as demand \u201cunrestricted humanitarian access\u201d to Douma, which has been under siege by the regime of Syrian president Bashar Al-Assad since April 2013.<\/span><\/p>\n

A U.S. draft resolution also voiced the Council\u2019s \u201coutrage that individuals continue to be killed and injured by chemical weapons in the Syrian Arab Republic, and expresses its determination that those responsible must be held accountable.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

For his part, Russia\u2019s U.N. ambassador declared the U.S. draft contained \u201cunacceptable elements,\u201d and eventually vetoed the proposed measure. A much weaker Russian counter-proposal, which would not provide for assigning responsibility for the attack, failed for lack of a Council majority, without a U.S. veto.<\/span><\/p>\n

Yet another Russian and Swedish-sponsored compromise resolution also failed.<\/span><\/p>\n

By contrast, a strong Security Council-approved impartial mechanism, known as the Joint Investigative Mechanism, or JIM, formally reported last June, that deadly sarin gas, a banned chemical weapon, had been used in an attack on the Syrian town of Khan Shaykhun, leaving at least 74 dead and more than 550 injured. The report made clear that the only real suspects were Assad\u2019s air forces, which were backed up over Khan Shaykhun\u2019s skies by Russian warplanes.<\/span><\/p>\n

Jointly-sponsored both by the U.N. and the OPCW, the JIM by its nature immediately put the weight of the international community behind its findings.<\/span><\/p>\n

Two days after the chemical attack, and long before the JIM report appeared, the Trump Administration fired some 50 Tomahawk cruise missiles at a Syrian air force base where he said the sarin attack was launched. It was, he said, \u201cin this vital national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter the spread of deadly chemical weapons.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The main outcome: in October, 2017, Russia vetoed a resolution that would have extended the JIM\u2019s mandate for another year. The mechanism ceased to exist in November \u2014 and in January, February and March, 2018, at least five chlorine gas attacks were reported to have taken place in or around Douma.<\/span><\/p>\n

In fact, Haley asserted in the Security Council: \u201cSince the Assad regime used chemical weapons at Khan Shaykhun one year ago, chemical weapons have been reportedly used dozens of times. And this Council does nothing.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Throughout the months of growing crisis over Assad\u2019s continued assaults, the U.N.\u2019s pronouncements have mainly revolved around hopes for a peace process orchestrated by Russia and Iran, in tandem with Turkey, that have done little more than freeze facts on the ground between rounds of Russian-backed regime attacks. The U.N. has also made largely ineffectual appeals to get humanitarian aid to starving, rebel-held besieged areas in East Ghouta and elsewhere.<\/span><\/p>\n

As recently as March 29, after a meeting with Russian Federation defense minister Sergey Shoigu, the U.N.\u2019s special envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, announced that \u201cthis is the fourth time we are having a useful, and in my opinion, very constructive discussion with Minister Shoigu\u201d \u2014 about humanitarian access to eastern Ghouta and Douma, and \u201cthe way to ensure the protection of civilians.\u201d None of those conversations had led to much.<\/span><\/p>\n

For his part, Secretary General Guterres has mainly issued carefully modulated statements of concern. When the April 7 chemical attack occurred, Guterres was on his way to a visit with Chinese president Xi Jinping. After he arrived in Beijing, his spokesperson issued a statement declaring the Secretary General was \u201cdeeply concerned about renewed and intensive violence in Douma, and particularly alarmed by allegations that chemical weapons have been used against civilian populations in Douma.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The spokesperson said that Guterres was \u201cparticularly alarmed\u201d by the allegations of chemical weapons use, but added carefully that \u201cwhile the United Nations is not in a position to verify these reports, the Secretary-General notes that any use of chemical weapons, if confirmed, is abhorrent, and requires a thorough investigation.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Due to the Russian intransigence, however, any investigation would not be carried out by a fact-finding mechanism used in the past, but only by the Hague-based Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), a multilateral but non-U.N. body that operates under the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention \u2014 and which partnered with the U.N. in the ill-fated JIM.<\/span><\/p>\n

Guterres\u2019 spokesperson emphasized that right now \u201cit\u2019s in the hands of the OPCW\u201d \u2014 although \u201cif the U.N. in Syria can be helpful in any way, we will do so.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The OPCW\u2019s director-general, Ahmet Uzumcu, has expressed his \u201cgrave concern\u201d regarding the April 7 Douma attack, and said the organization\u2019s Fact-Finding Mission would report its findings \u2014 he did not say when \u2014 to the \u201cstates parties to the Chemical Weapons Convention.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Critics have long argued the U.N. in Syria has been tacitly supportive of the Assad regime, by funneling much of its humanitarian aid through regime-dominated organizations and acquiescing in the removal of medical and other critical supplies from a handful of relief convoys that managed to get Assad\u2019s permission to reach long-besieged areas such as eastern Ghouta.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe U.N. has failed miserably multiple times,\u201d observes Zaher Sahloul, president and co-founder of MedGlobal, a non-government organization that has trained medical personnel in Syria as well as elsewhere. \u201cMost U.N. assistance is channeled into regime-controlled areas. The regime uses its own budget to buy weapons.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Even on symbolic levels, the sprawling and uncoordinated U.N. array of organizations has been unable to distance itself from the Syrian regime.<\/span><\/p>\n

This week, the Geneva-based gadfly organization U.N. Watch tried to raise a fuss about the fact that Syria\u2019s representative is slated to take over in May the monthly rotating presidency of the Conference on Disarmament, a 65-member U.N. body that debates \u201cpractically all multilateral arms control and disarmament problems,\u201d according to its website.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Conference boasts that it originally negotiated the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and on their Destruction \u2014 which is now governed by another U.N.-supported organization in which Syria is also a member.<\/span><\/p>\n

U.N. Watch has called for the U.S., the European Union and U.N. Secretary General Guterres to protest the Syrian presidential rotation and boycott proceedings during the Syrian tenure. But stopping Syria from taking the disarmament post is pretty much impossible. The rules of the Conference on Disarmament provide that the presidency rotates on a strictly alphabetical basis among its member states, unless the selected member state chooses otherwise.<\/span><\/p>\n

In fact, Syria held the presidency of the Conference on Disarmament once before, in 2007. As it happens, that was the year in which Israel successfully bombed a clandestine nuclear reactor Syria was building with the aid of the world\u2019s most dangerous nuclear proliferator, North Korea.<\/span><\/p>\n

North Korea, in turn, assumed the presidency of the Conference on Disarmament in 2011.<\/span><\/p>\n

That artificial equal status among U.N. member states was further underlined in March by a panel of experts who monitor U.N. sanctions against North Korea.<\/span><\/p>\n

In a lengthy report largely focused on sanctions evasion, the experts took note of the surprising behavior of the U.N.\u2019s Geneva-based World Intellectual Property Association, which had facilitated an international patent by North Korea for the industrial production of sodium cyanide \u2014 which can be used in the production of the nerve gas Tabun.<\/span><\/p>\n

WIPO had not felt it necessary to advise the sanctions experts about the patent, even though sodium cyanide was explicitly named on U.N. sanctions lists as a banned chemical. At the time, a WIPO spokesperson told Fox News that: \u201cWe communicate with the relevant U.N. oversight committees as necessary.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The sanctions panel, however, found WIPO\u2019s judgment to be in error. Moreover, the experts noted that when they asked WIPO to provide information on the patent inventors and their North Korean affiliations, WIPO said the information was not required in their patent application form.<\/span><\/p>\n

The panel noted dryly that \u201cthis makes it impossible to determine whether the inventors from [North Korea] were affiliated\u201d with any organizations or individuals on U.N. sanctions lists.<\/span><\/p>\n

The panel of experts \u201crecommended\u201d that WIPO do better in the future.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the gruesome aftermath of Syria\u2019s most recent chemical weapons atrocities, the stakes \u2014 for the U.N. and for the world \u2014 are much, much higher.<\/span><\/p>\n

Source:-http:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/world\/2018\/04\/10\/us-warning-at-un-world-must-see-justice-done-on-syria.html<\/span><\/p>\n

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