Russia-China veto in UN Security Council gave settlement in Syria a chance - Lavrov

MOSCOW, April 20. /TASS/. In the Syrian crisis there has emerged a chance of a political settlement, and efforts to prevent Syria from being turned into another Libya have achieved success, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told a student conference at the MGIMO institute of international relations (university), entitled UN Model, in Moscow on Monday. "These days some of our partners have been trying to turn the United Nations into an office that merely rubberstamps decisions made elsewhere," he said. "Decisions that are not a subject matter of compromise or consensus. Some have been trying to push the UN Security Council to the sidelines, if such decisions fail to be adopted, and acting in defiance of the main UN body." "UN Security Council resolutions become a subject matter of a rather hard negotiating process and compromises. They must be realistic," he said. "If a decision does not rely on universal support of UN Security Council members and members of the international community, it will be realistic and hard to implement. Surely you will be discussing the right of veto today." "When our Western partners fail to push through a unilateral resolution because Russia and China use their veto rights, we are often accused of UN Security Council’s paralysis," Lavrov said. "But it is not accidental the UN founders included in the UN Charter the need for the unanimity of all five permanent members of the UN Security Council. That fundamental component of the UN Security Council has several aspects." Aspect one, Lavrov said, was the sad experience of the League of Nations, which "failed to ensure the special role and responsibility of the leading powers and for that reason was unable to function normally." "Even the United States lost interest towards it," Lavrov said. "Aspect two is the need for maintaining a balance and the impermissibility of permitting the international system to be subordinate to any dictating. Also, it should not be weak," Lavrov said. "The veto right in the UN Security Council is not a privilege but a great responsibility," he said. "Now we can say that the vetoes that Russia and China have used several times in relation to the Syrian crisis have brought about a chance for transition to a political settlement." "And it was certainty the Russian-Chinese veto that prevented Syria from being turned into another Libya, which has collapsed as a state, when our Western counterparts - the NATO countries - in violation of the UN Security Council’s mandate got involved in the war and played a personal role in the operation to do away with the leader of a sovereign state." Read more