Yesterday (16/7/12) and today (17/7/12) Joint Special Envoy Kofi Annan has been Russia to meet with the Russian Foreign Minister and President. Today the United Nations (UN) Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has been visiting China. The purpose of these visits is to put pressure on Russia and China not to veto a British authored United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolution on Syria which is expected to be voted on tomorrow (18/7/12).
The problem is that although the British resolution will extend the mandate for the United Nations Supervision Mission In Syria (UNSMIS) for a further 45 days it also calls on the Syria government to stop using heavy weapons and backs that call up with Chapter 7 measures that can include military force.
Unfortunately the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) decision on Sunday (15/7/12) to classify Syria as being in a state of war means that the UNSC can no longer call on Syria to stop using reasonable force (including heavy weapons) to achieve legitimate military objectives. It most certainly can not impose Chapter 7 measures to force Syria to do so. Therefore as no member of the UNSC can legitimately vote for the British resolution it shouldn't even get to the point where Russia or have to veto it.
Fortunately Russia has tabled it's own resolution which simply extends the UNSMIS mandate by 90 days. Surely then it's time for Britain to do the decent thing and withdraw it's resolution before it is inevitably vetoed and allow the Russian resolution to passed before the UNSMIS mandate expires on Friday (20/7/12).
Sent from my BlackBerry® smartphone on O2
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