Syrian sanctions vetoed, U.S.' Haley slams Russia

U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley assailed the vetoes Tuesday by Russia and China, accusing them of putting “their friends in the Assad regime ahead of our global security.”
U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley assailed the vetoes Tuesday by Russia and China, accusing them of putting “their friends in the Assad regime ahead of our global security.”

UNITED NATIONS -- Russia and President Donald Trump's administration clashed in a vote at the U.N. Security Council for the first time Tuesday as the Kremlin vetoed a measure backed by the United States to punish Syria for using chemical weapons.

photo

AP/BEBETO MATTHEWS

Vladimir Safronkov, (center) Russia’s deputy ambassador to the United Nations, on Tuesday casts a veto against what he called a “politically biased” U.N. Security Council measure to sanction Syria for its chemical-weapons attacks.

While the Russians had long signaled their intent to block the resolution, which was supported by dozens of countries, including the United States, the clash offered insights into the big divides that remain between the Kremlin and Trump, who has vowed to improve ties.

The vote in the 15-member council was nine in favor and three against. Those opposed to the measure were Russia and China, two of the five veto-wielding permanent members of the council, and Bolivia, a nonpermanent member. Three nonpermanent members -- Egypt, Ethiopia and Kazakhstan -- abstained.

It was the Kremlin's seventh Security Council veto in defense of Syrian President Bashar Assad over the war that has been convulsing his country for nearly six years.

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The U.S. ambassador, Nikki Haley, who has called chemical-weapons attacks in Syria "barbaric," accused Russia and China of putting "their friends in the Assad regime ahead of our global security."

"It's a sad day for the Security Council when members make excuses for other member states killing their own people," she said in the council chambers. "They turned away from defenseless men, women and children who died gasping for breath when Assad's forces dropped their poisonous gas."

The resolution, proposed by the U.K. and France months ago and endorsed by the United States last week, would have imposed sanctions on a handful of Syrian military officials and entities for having dropped chlorine-filled barrel bombs on opposition-held areas on at least three occasions in 2014 and 2015, according to a United Nations panel.

Russia's envoy, Vladimir Safronkov, defended the veto, calling the resolution "politically biased" and asserting that Russia's concerns about the draft language had not been addressed. "This is railroading the draft by the Western troika," he said. He stressed that there was "no convincing evidence" to determine who was responsible for using chemical weapons.

China's ambassador, Liu Jieyi, recalling the now-discredited U.S. warnings of Iraq's "so-called WMDs," or weapons of mass destruction, in 2003, criticized the resolution as an example of "hypocrisy" by the Western powers. "It was forced through to a vote while council members still have differences," he said. "This is in no way helpful to finding a solution."

Chlorine is banned as a weapon under an international treaty that Assad's government signed in 2013.

The conflict over the resolution was in sharp contrast to a Russian-American consensus on the need to contain Syria's use of chemical weapons. After a sarin gas attack on a suburb of Damascus in August 2013, Russia and the U.S. struck a deal to force Assad to sign the chemical weapons treaty and dismantle his stockpile of the poisonous munitions under international supervision.

The Syrian government, though, violated the deal, according to a U.N. panel set up by the Security Council, known as the Joint Investigative Mechanism. It found that the government had used chemical weapons at least three times.

Russia helped to create the panel but questioned its findings when it implicated the Syrian government. The panel also found that Islamic State militants in Syria used mustard gas in August 2015.

Russia made clear last week that it would defeat the draft measure to impose sanctions on the Syrian government, calling it unbalanced.

Harsh words for Russia

After Tuesday's Security Council vote, Haley decried Russia and China, saying that they sat through nearly a year of briefings by investigators and never objected but that "now they suddenly say the investigation just wasn't enough."

"Russia's suggestion is for the Assad regime to investigate itself for use of chemical weapons," she said. "There is nothing wrong with the investigation. Russia just doesn't want to criticize the Assad regime for using chemical weapons. That's the truth."

She said the United States has already put the 21 individuals, companies and organizations targeted for U.N. sanctions in the defeated resolution on the U.S. sanctions blacklist and will urge the European Union and other countries to follow suit.

President Vladimir Putin of Russia reinforced his opposition on Tuesday, adding that any Security Council penalties on the Syrian government would complicate diplomatic efforts underway in Geneva aimed at halting the war.

"As for sanctions against the Syrian leadership, I think the move is totally inappropriate now," he said at a news conference while visiting Kyrgyzstan. "It does not help, would not help the negotiation process. It would only hurt or undermine confidence during the process."

Information for this article was contributed by Somini Sengupta and Rick Gladstone of The New York Times and by Edith M. Lederer of The Associated Press.

A Section on 03/01/2017

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