Anger as UN action against Syria vetoed

Russia and China on Tuesday vetoed what would have been the first legally binding Security Council resolution against Syria since President Bashar Assad’s military began using tanks and soldiers to attack pro-democracy protesters in mid-March. The UN estimates the crackdown has led to more than 2,700 deaths.

Russia and China both said they oppose the crackdown but that sanctions wouldn’t help resolve the crisis. The UN vote was 9-2 with four abstentions — India,South Africa,Brazil and Lebanon.

On Wednesday,Germany,France,Britain,Denmark and the EU joined Turkey in denouncing the veto,with French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe sounding outraged.

Juppe denounced Assad as a “dictator who is massacring his people” and vowed support for Syrians trying to overthrow the head of the former French colony. Juppe’s strongly worded English-language statement was highly unusual.

The EU and the US have imposed several rounds of sanctions against Assad and his regime,including a ban on the import of Syrian oil. Most of Syria’s oil exports had gone to Europe. Now Damascus is forced to look for buyers in the east.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan used a speech in South Africa on Wednesday to say that Turkey and other nations would press ahead with sanctions.

“Turkey and either some or all of the EU nations,and who knows which others,will take steps,” the state-run Anatolia news agency quoted Erdogan as saying. “It won’t stop our sanctions.”

Germany sharply criticised the veto by Russia and China,with Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle saying it was a “really sad day for international law and for human rights,too.”

Westerwelle said Western nations would maintain pressure on Assad and that European countries are preparing an eighth package of sanctions against Syria.

British Foreign Secretary William Hague told a rally of his governing Conservative Party that Beijing and Moscow were wrong to oppose the proposed resolution.

“The decision of Russia and China to veto this resolution and to side with a brutal regime rather than the people of Syria is deeply mistaken,” Hague said in England.