{"id":28833,"date":"2013-05-20T12:00:31","date_gmt":"2013-05-20T11:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=28833"},"modified":"2015-05-06T12:53:04","modified_gmt":"2015-05-06T11:53:04","slug":"u-n-assembly-slams-syrian-governments-escalation-of-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2013\/05\/u-n-assembly-slams-syrian-governments-escalation-of-war\/","title":{"rendered":"U.N. Assembly Slams Syrian Government\u2019s \u2018Escalation\u2019 of War"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Bashar<\/a>

Bashar al-Assad<\/p><\/div>\n

The U.N. General Assembly on Wednesday [15 May 2013] condemned the Syrian government’s \u201descalation\u201d of the country’s war and backed the opposition Syrian National Coalition in transition talks.<\/i><\/p>\n

The General Assembly (GA) voted on a Gulf Arab-drafted declaration to resolve the Syrian crisis.<\/p>\n

While the non-binding text has no legal force, resolutions adopted by the 193-nation assembly can carry significant moral and political weight, according to Reuters.<\/p>\n

The vote result – 107 in favor, 12 against and 59 abstentions – contrasted sharply with that of a resolution that passed last year with 133 in favor, Reuters said.<\/p>\n

U.N. diplomats said, according to Reuters, that the decline in support for Wednesday’s resolution showed growing unease about Syria’s fractious rebel groups fighting Bashar al-Assad’s forces in the two-year civil war.<\/p>\n

The Syrian Ambassador to the U.N., Bashar Jafari, called on member states and the ‘Friends of Syria’ to vote against the draft resolution, saying it does not provide a political resolution to the ongoing Syrian crisis.<\/p>\n

The Syrian U.N representative also questioned the feasibility of backing the SNC and supplying the opposition with weapons, while speaking at the GA.<\/p>\n

In the same vain, Russia, China and Iran echoed Jafari\u2019s call, saying that supporting and recognizing the opposition will not resolve the crisis.<\/p>\n

The Iranian ambassador at the U.N., Mohammad Khazaee, said the Arab-backed draft resolution is considered a \u201cdeviation\u201d from the United Nations\u2019 principles.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia condemned the violence in war-torn Syria and called during the meeting for accepting the resolution, saying it backs the demands of the Syrian opposition.<\/p>\n

Saudi Arabia\u2019s U.N. Ambassador Abdallah al- Mouallimi blamed the Syrian government of killing and displacing civilians, adding that the number of those killed may have reached 80,000.<\/p>\n

The vote comes as Britain and France delayed a Syrian request for the Islamist al-Nusra Front to be listed by the United Nations as a terrorist group.<\/p>\n

The European countries said they want the militants to instead be listed as an alias of al-Qaeda, diplomats were quoted saying Tuesday by Reuters.<\/p>\n

Wednesday\u2019s vote comes as Washington and European governments have been mulling the benefits and risks of supplying arms to Syrian rebels.<\/p>\n

The Syrian conflict started more than two years ago, but turned into a civil war where the United Nations says at least 70,000 people have been killed.<\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 alarabiya.net<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The U.N. General Assembly on Wednesday [15 May 2013] condemned the Syrian government’s \u201descalation\u201d of the country’s war and backed the opposition Syrian National Coalition in transition talks. While the non-binding text has no legal force, resolutions adopted by the 193-nation assembly can carry significant moral and political weight, according to Reuters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[204,82],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28833","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-syria-in-context","category-united-nations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28833","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28833"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28833\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}