US and Russia Finding Ways Around UN Security Council
Barbara Slavin writes that both the US and Russia are circumventing the UN Security Council to deal with the worsening crisis in Syria — but neither is making much progress. While Russia tries to organize a group including Iran and excluding the Syrian opposition, the US is working through a “Friends of Syria” group that excludes Russia.
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.
