Both the US and Russia are circumventing the UN Security Council to deal with the worsening crisis in Syria. Neither is making much progress.
Konstantin Kosachev, former chairman of the foreign affairs committee in the Russian parliament and now director of an agency that deals with former Soviet republics and Russians abroad, told a Washington think tank Monday (June 18) that there was no chance that Russia would permit a so-called Chapter VII resolution authorizing foreign military intervention in Syria. Russia is furious that such a resolution enabled NATO to help overthrow the Qadhafi regime in Libya. The threat of a Russian veto forced the US to go around the Security Council in the 1990s to intervene in the Balkans.
The Russians are also trying to go around the council but with a different goal: to organize a contact group to discuss next steps in Syria. The Russians want to include Iran — which the US opposes — and exclude members of the Syrian opposition, according to an article today (June 19) in the Lebanese newspaper An-Nahar.
The US, in turn, is working through a “Friends of Syria” group that includes Turkey and key Arab states that support the opposition Syrian National Council and the Free Syria Army. Russia is not part of this group.
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