Hydrablog

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/04/world/middleeast/un-general-assembly-criticizes-syria.html
August 3, 2012
After Council’s Deadlock, Syria Is Criticized at U.N.
By RICK GLADSTONE [Syria] [UN] [must be more than 11,000 , after which UN and other stopped counting—perhaps a month ago] [already the UN and others have warned al Assad] [the tentative ceasefire achieved when UN observers arrived has slowly disintegrated] [use psci 350] [the civil war continues] [followup] [a round of finger pointing in the UN Security Council after Kofi Anan’s mission failed] [*]
The United Nations General Assembly voted overwhelmingly on Friday for an Arab-backed resolution that severely criticized the Syrian government, blaming it almost exclusively for the killings and other atrocities that have come to shape the 17-month-old uprising there.
The vote on the resolution, which had strong support from the United States and other Western governments, came a day after Kofi Annan, the special Syria envoy of the United Nations and the Arab League, resigned in frustration over his inability to achieve a diplomatic breakthrough. He blamed in part the deadlocked Security Council’s failure to give his efforts coercive power. [*]
The General Assembly resolution, which also demanded that the Syrian government carry out Mr. Annan’s plan as promised more than four months ago, has no coercive power. That made it little more than a diplomatic exercise aimed at expressing frustration over the Security Council’s inaction and embarrassing Syria and its slim group of backers, which include Russia, China and Iran.
Although the 133-to-12 vote clearly illustrated Syria’s isolation, the fact that 33 countries abstained showed what some diplomats from those countries called discomfort with the strident tone and lopsided bias of the resolution. It made only passing generic references to possible atrocities carried out by Mr. Assad’s enemies.
The resolution was drafted by Saudi Arabia and strongly backed by Qatar, both of them suppliers of weapons to Mr. Assad’s armed opponents. [*]
The Saudis might have won far fewer votes if they had not diluted the resolution from an earlier draft, which had called on Mr. Assad to resign. Many countries, even those appalled by the Syrian government’s harsh repression, oppose such measures as foreign interference in a member’s internal affairs. [a shame] [*]
In introducing the resolution for a vote, Abdallah Y. al-Mouallimi, the Saudi ambassador, told the General Assembly that Mr. Annan’s resignation and the escalating violence in Syria, including the military’s use of air power on civilian targets, make “this action more important than ever before.” The resolution also pointedly warned Syria not to use its arsenal of chemical weapons, a possibility raised last month when Syrian officials said such weapons would be deployed only against external aggressors.
Bashar Jaafari, Syria’s ambassador, denounced the resolution, calling it imbalanced and full of hypocrisy. He said it was a “strange paradox” that the states submitting it, under the General Assembly’s agenda item on prevention of armed conflict, were the same that had “played a major role in the militarization of the situation in Syria, by providing weapons to the terrorist groups.”
Speaking later to reporters outside the General Assembly hall, Mr. Jaafari said of the Saudis and Qataris, “You cannot be a fireman and arsonist at the same time.”
Sir Mark Lyall Grant, the British ambassador, rejected the criticism. “The resolution is not balanced because the situation on the ground is not balanced,” he told reporters. “We should not forget that this crisis has been going on for 17 months. For most of that period, the opposition has been peaceful.”
It was wrong, the ambassador said, to equate the armed insurgency against Mr. Assad to the “violence perpetrated by the regime on the opposition, which, yes, has now had to take up arms to defend itself and to defend its civilian neighborhoods.”