News / Brèves Back to previous selection / Retour à la sélection précédente Russia Will Accept No Further Unilateral Steps in Syria 28 September 2016 PRESS RELEASE EIRNS—The Syrian war exploded at the UN Security Council, yesterday, during an emergency session called by the United States, the United Kingdom, and France in an effort to stop the Russian-backed offensive in Aleppo. Judging from the news reports, it was not a diplomatic effort, but rather an attempt to indict the Russian and Syrian governments for war crimes, an effort which was turned back on the three Western representatives by Russia and Syria, who charged them with supporting terrorists. "What Russia is sponsoring and doing is not counterterrorism, it is barbarism," said a hyperventilated Samantha Power. "Instead of pursuing peace, Russia and Assad make war. Instead of helping get lifesaving aid to civilians, Russia and Assad are bombing the humanitarian convoys, hospitals, and first responders who are trying desperately to keep people alive." Russia’s UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin replied by declaring that Russia will no longer accept unilateral measures. "We have always been making concessions, at least tried, and reached agreements with the Syrian government," he said. "In the long run, it all ended in militants’ regrouping, receiving reinforcement, and staging new offensives." Then, he said, a demand followed that the Syrian government unilaterally stop flights of its warplanes as a preliminary condition. "First they said for three days. We agreed. Then they said, ‘No, the U.S. President has changed his mind, we need seven days.’ No one knows why. Such tactical tricks cannot go on endlessly. We will agree on no further unilateral steps," he said. The American side, in his words, "has actually acknowledged its inability to influence the groups it controls and honestly implement the agreements," first of all, to separate moderate groups from terrorists and "draw relevant division lines on the ground." Bashar Ja’afari, Syria’s UN Ambassador, told the council that Syria will remain committed to combatting terrorism, and that others must stop exploiting the Syrian people. He vowed that the Syrian government will not relinquish a single inch of its territory as per the Syrian constitution and the rules of international law, stressing that politicizing the humanitarian crisis will only extend it, increase Syrians’ suffering, and encourage the spread of terrorism. He mocked the U.S., U.K., and French representatives who, it seemed, are "rediscovering the wheel when they said that the Syrian government is seeking to reclaim Aleppo. Imagine the scale of this monumental discovery made by the representatives of three permanent member states in the Security Council, as if Aleppo is a city in Djibouti or Afghanistan or in Brazil!" Ja’afari charged that the United States, the United Kingdom, and France, the countries that had called the session, had repeatedly blocked resolutions in the council to denounce terrorist attacks, using suicide methods, in Syria and that now they are engaged in a bid to "rescue" armed terrorist groups that they falsely label as "moderate opposition," adding that this always happens when they are on the verge of being defeated. They are forgetting, he said, the imagery of a 12-year-old Palestinian boy in Aleppo beheaded by Nour Eddin al-Zenki, an anti-Assad group that the U.S. actually supports. "We believe that some permanent member states’ calls for holding this session constitute a message from these states to Jabhat al-Nusra and other terrorist groups affiliated to it, saying that the support and political cover provided to them are still standing and won’t stop," he said.