Russia has own UN resolution amid Syria debate

Moscow has urged the United Nations (UN) to adopt a Russian-drafted resolution targeting propaganda used by extremist groups to radicalize people around the world.

On Monday, Russia’s UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin announced Moscow’s proposal, saying, “The nature of the threat has changed dramatically” and that an updated resolution was needed.

He added that the Russian proposal was “aimed at countering terrorist ideology and violent extremist ideology” and was floating a UN role in implementation and international cooperation, the exchange of information, and assistance in tackling the issue.

At the same time, the envoy said, the world had to form a united front, especially across the cyber world, against such vicious groups as al-Qaeda, al-Nusra Front, and Daesh.

Daesh unleashed a campaign of terror in Syria and Iraq in 2014. Syria had already found itself in the grips of a foreign-backed militancy three years before, while, in Iraq, the rise of the group was largely attributed to the chaos that followed the US’s 2003 invasion in the name of “war on terror.”

Churkin, the Russian UN envoy, also dismissed a proposal forwarded by France to the Council a day earlier for a renewed ceasefire in the northwestern Syrian city of Aleppo and a ban on overflights.

“I’m not even sure many other Council members would like to see a resolution on cessation of hostilities that has no chance of working,” he said. “If the only effect of that resolution is that the secretary general will start thinking of some monitoring mechanism, which is not going to work in the first place, then there is not much sense in having that resolution.”

The official, meanwhile, said what had to be prioritized was the fight against extremists.

Also on Monday, Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova reacted to an earlier move by the US to suspend participation in bilateral channels with Moscow over Syria, calling the decision regrettable.

“We regret this decision by Washington to curtail the work of the specialist groups in Geneva to withdraw their experts and to limit contacts only to the area of avoiding any conflicts,” Zakharova said.

Zakharova said Washington was trying to shift responsibility for the failure of the ceasefire to Russia.

“Washington simply did not fulfill the key condition of the agreement to improve the humanitarian condition around Aleppo,” she said.

SS