World outrage at Russia, China vetoes

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Even UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon voiced regret that the Security Council was unable to pass a resolution urging Syria to halt its six-month crackdown on pro-democracy protesters.

Turkey’s prime minister said his nation and others would respond by imposing more sanctions of their own against Syria.

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 would not 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 European Union 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.”

UN Secretary-General Ban regretted “that the council has not been able to agree and he hopes that the disagreements … will be overcome,” Ban’s spokesman Martin Nesirky told reporters. He also reiterated Ban’s position that the “violence in Syria is unacceptable.”

The head of Syria’s newly united opposition said that if the world does not support the revolt against the Assad regime it risks seeing more of his opponents turn to violence.

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