UN Security Council declines to call for Syria ceasefire as fighting worsens
Cessation of hostilities ‘not realistic,’ Russian envoy says, since anti-Assad ‘terrorists’ won’t abide by it; humanitarian chief says situation worst since 2015
BEIRUT, Lebanon — The UN’s humanitarian chief briefed the Security Council on Friday on the worsening situation for civilians in Syria and the United Nations’ call for an immediate 30-day ceasefire to deliver aid and evacuate the critically ill — but the council took no action.
Russia’s UN Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia told reporters a humanitarian ceasefire is “not realistic” because “the terrorists” are keeping up attacks, although Moscow would like one.
Sweden and Kuwait called for Thursday’s closed-door briefing to get an update from humanitarian chief Mark Lowcock on what Sweden’s UN Ambassador Olof Skoog called the “dramatic” humanitarian situation which is “deteriorating in many, many areas.”
Skoog said Sweden and Kuwait are “working on a follow-up” to a proposed council statement on the dire humanitarian situation that failed to get the unanimous council support required.
According to a council diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity because the consultations were closed, Lowcock said the humanitarian situation was the worst since 2015, citing destruction in rebel-held Idlib from government attacks that have seen more than 300,000 civilians flee since mid-December.
Lowcock also cited the “horrific conditions” in the rebel-held Damascus suburb of Eastern Ghouta where more than 700 people need immediate evacuation and malnutrition is widespread, the diplomat said.
The US and Russia also sparred over the US-led coalition’s airstrikes on Syrian government-backed troops, with Russia’s envoy Nebenzia saying he had told the Security Council that such strikes were “inadmissible” and “deplorable.” He said they cannot be repeated — no matter what reasons the coalition gave to justify an attack.
Nebenzia said US Ambassador Nikki Haley raised the issue of the airstrikes first at a closed council meeting Thursday where she defended the bombing that the US military says killed about 100 fighters. The US-led coalition said its action in eastern Syria was in “self-defense,” citing a major attack on its allied forces and US advisers in Deir el-Zour province.
Nebenzia told reporters at UN headquarters in New York that he reminded the council that the coalition wasn’t invited into Syria, and Russia sees that its fight against “international terrorism” is going “beyond that.”
He said “to confront those who really fight the international terrorists on the ground, on the Syrian side, is criminal.”
Nebenzia also said that while the humanitarian situation in Syria is “deplorable,” it is “in no way much more different than it used to be a month ago -— but now we are being presented with it as if something dramatic has happened.”
