U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley turned to her Russian counterpart at the Security Council with mock admiration during Friday’s emergency debate over the brewing crisis in Syria, and essentially accused him of lying to the body.
“I’m in awe, Vasily, of how you say what you say with a straight face – I really, really am,” Haley told Ambassador Vasily Nebenzia.
It was the latest personal turn in a debate over the use of chemical weapons in the Syrian civil war. The U.S. and European leaders have blamed Syrian President Bashar Assad and his Russian backers for using chemical weapons, while Russia has accused Western allies of staging gas attacks in order to provide a pretext for an assault on Assad.
The lack of agreement about the basic facts of the conflict has added heat to a debate that already contains plenty of opportunity for a military clash.
“The Russian Federation has asked us to discuss what it calls ‘unilateral threats’ related to Syria,” Haley continued. “What is strange is that Russia is ignoring the real threat to international peace and security that has brought us all here. And it is ignoring its own unilateral responsibility for all of it … It is Russia alone that has stopped at nothing to defend the Syrian regime’s multiple uses of chemical weapons.”
Russia maintains that western “intelligence services” staged the evidence of a chemical weapons attack last Saturday in Douma, Syria.
“American partners have adopted a largely consumerist approach to the Security Council,” Nebenzia said Friday, according to a U.N. translator. “The Council [provides] cover for Iraq test tubes or the Libya no-fly zone. That is why they need the Council. Such a virtual empty test-tube is what you are placing before us right now.”
Assad has been fighting to secure the suburbs of Damascus, which has proven difficult throughout the Syrian civil war. Haley cited a litany of chemical weapons attacks in Syria, while recalling Russia’s 2013 pledge to oversee the destruction of Assad’s chemical weapons stockpiles, to dismiss Nebenzia’s charge.
“In January, Assad used at least four chlorine-filled rockets in Douma. And then, he struck again last weekend,” she said. “And thanks to Russia, there was no U.N. body to determine blame. But we know who did this. Our allies know who did this. Russia can complain all it wants about fake news, but no one is buying its lies and its cover-ups. Russia was supposed to guarantee that Assad wouldn’t use chemical weapons, and Russia did the opposite.”
Nebenzia accuses Haley of manipulating the controversy to burnish her own political image.
“My American colleague will very carefully count the number of Russian vetoes in Syria,” he said during a Tuesday debate. “We do not discount the possibility that she has taken upon herself [an effort] to make sure that through the reckless policy of the United States she can establish her own personal record here.”
Haley has been arguing that Assad must be punished in order to mitigate the possibility that chemical weapons emerge again as a standard weapon in war.
[Related: Nikki Haley: US prepared to strike Assad again]
“Everything the United Nations stands for is being blatantly defied in Syria, with the help of a permanent member of this Council,” she said Friday. “All nations and all people will be harmed if we allow Assad to normalize the use of chemical weapons. It is those who act to violate the prohibition on chemical weapons who deserve our condemnation. Those who act to defend it deserve our support.”
