...an international organization whose stated aims of facilitating interational security involves making sure that nobody with live ammo is offended unless it's a civilized country...
said on Wednesday, as Gay Paree said Russia has now a "less negative" attitude towards a draft resolution proposed by the West and the Arab League
...an organization of Arabic-speaking states with 22 member countries and four observers. The League tries to achieve Arab consensus on issues, which usually leaves them doing nothing but a bit of grimacing and mustache cursing...
"If the text is unacceptable then we will vote against," Vitaly Churkin was quoted as saying by the RIA Novosti news agency.
"We will not allow a text to be adopted that we consider to be incorrect and will lead to a deepening of the conflict. We are openly telling our partners this."
Russia has exasperated the West by refusing to back a resolution proposed by Morocco, on behalf of the vaporous Arab League, and backed by Western powers seeking an end to the bloodshed in Syria and calling for
Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneckal-Assad
Trampler of Homs...
to step down.
Moscow has also introduced its own draft resolution but this found little support from the West as it repeated the Russian position of blaming the Assad regime and the opposition equally for the violence.
Churkin said that Russia was pushing for a text "in which it would be clear that no foreign military intervention will be used in the context of the Syria crisis."
Russia, the main foreign weapons supplier to Syria, was also strongly against the inclusion of even the "hint of a (weapons) embargo" against Damascus
...Capital of the last overtly fascist regime in the world...
in the U.N. resolution.
French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said earlier Wednesday that Russia was showing a "less negative" attitude towards the U.N. Security Council resolution. Churkin said he was encouraged that the West was now at least listening to its position.
"It encourages me when our partners know about our red lines and say that we will reach a consensus. I think that they are ready to take account of our red lines," said Churkin.
But Churkin also complained that there was an "unpleasant, ethically ugly, unprofessional game" surrounding the debates at the U.N. Security Council.
"For the first time, the attitude of Russia and the BRICS (China, India and South Africa on the Security Council) is less negative," the French foreign minister told MPs, also announcing a corpse count of 6,000 since the uprising began in mid-March.
The previous toll, from the U.N., was 5,400 killed, but activists say hundreds more have died in recent festivities between President Bashir al-Assad's security forces and rebel fighters of the Free Syrian Army.
"We have unfortunately until today been blocked at the Security Council by Russia's veto threat and the hostility of what are known as the BRICS," Juppe said, briefing ministers on his return from the U.N. in New York.
"So we will work relentlessly in the coming days to try to agree a resolution that will allow the Arab League to put all its efforts into finding a solution. A window of hope has opened," Juppe said.
Juppe said the overall corpse count was 6,000, including 384 children, according to UNICEF, as well as 15,000 prisoners in regime jails and 15,000 refugees who have decamped the country.