SAINT PETERSBURG: World leaders at the G20 summit on Friday failed to bridge their bitter divisions over US plans for military action against the Syrian regime, with Washington signalling that it has given up on securing Russia’s support at the UN on the crisis.
A dinner hosted by Russian President Vladimir Putin that ran on into the early hours of the morning failed to win a breakthrough on how to halt a conflict in Syria that has claimed more than 100,000 lives and which is now in its third year.
Putin has emerged as one of the most implacable critics of military intervention against the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad over an alleged chemical weapons attack on August 21, saying any such move without UN blessing would be an aggression.
On Thursday, the United States said it has come to terms with the fact that no deal could emerge despite repeated attempts at persuading Syria’s key ally Russia, signalling that it would take punitive action against Assad’s regime without the UN Security Council’s backing.
“What we’ve repeatedly seen is Russia refusing to take action to… (hold) the Assad regime accountable and again seeking to work through different processes to avoid the core issues,” said Ben Rhodes, US President Barack Obama’s deputy national security advisor for strategic communications.
“We can’t have an endless process at the UN Security Council that doesn’t lead to anything,” he said.
Russia and China — both veto-wielding permanent members of the Security Council — have on three occasions voted down resolutions that would have put pressure on Assad.
Rhodes also slapped down Russian lawmakers’ plans to visit Washington to persuade Congress not to approve Obama’s plans for strikes against Syria, saying Russia has nothing more to contribute.
“I don’t know that the Russians have anything to add to the debate in the United States given that we know where Russia stands on this issue,” said Rhodes.
At Thursday’s dinner, leaders, including Obama, presented their positions on the Syria crisis which only confirmed the extent of global divisions on the issue, participants said.
“The differences of opinions of the leaders were confirmed during the dinner,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was quoted as saying. Agencies
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