Sunday 5 February 2012

Syria - no agreed UN resolution and, in any event, are we the worlds Policeman?

So we have no UN resolution and once again there are calls to intervene. This is unlikely to happen without a UN Resolution as there was with Libya.
The Syrian government is clearly determined to kill its way out of any trouble. I regret that the UN resolution has not gone ahead. The massacres are getting worse. The difference in 2012 for Syria is that the democratic genie is out of the bottle and I am remain of the view that the Assad regime will not survive 2012.
There is close to a full scale civil war now and it is a great shame that China and Russia have vetoed the UN Resolution.
The sanctions are taking effect, as is diplomacy, and I do not expect the UN will leave this matter without revisiting the resolution again. As the BBC reports:
"The US said the veto was "shameful", while Britain said it "lets the Syrian people down". France also condemned the block at the UN Security Council.
Russia and China said the proposed draft was "unbalanced".
The document was rejected just hours after activists accused Syrian troops of killing at least 55 people in Homs."

The key comment there is the fact that Russia and China found the draft unbalanced - if it is reworded I suspect that there will finally be a document that Russia and China will sign.