President Trump is “prepared to do more” to stop the ongoing civil war in Syria if Russia cannot convince Syrian President Bashar Assad to abide by cease-fire agreements, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley warned Friday.
“The United States took a very measured step last night,” Haley told the U.N. Security Council on Friday. “We are prepared to do more, but we hope that will not be necessary. It is time for all civilized nations to stop the horrors that are taking place in Syria and demand a political solution.”
Western diplomats and Russian representatives have clashed repeatedly at the Security Council over Putin’s support for Assad, as Russia has vetoed several U.N. resolutions targeting the embattled president. After months of former President Barack Obama’s ambassador, Samantha Power, issuing outraged condemnations of Russian support for the Assad regime, Haley and her British counterpart adopted a different tack: following U.S. retaliation against Assad, they spent Friday trying to mock Russia into changing course.
Both Haley and Matthew Rycroft, the United Kingdom’s representative to the U.N., focused on Russia’s avowed role in cutting a deal to deprive Assad of his chemical weapons as a way of averting U.S. airstrikes in 2013.
“Let’s think about the possible reasons for Russia’s failure,” Haley said. “It could be that Russia is knowingly allowing chemical weapons to remain in Syria. It could be that Russia has been incompetent in its efforts to remove the chemical weapons. Or it could be that the Assad regime is playing the Russians for fools, telling them that there are no chemical weapons, all the while stockpiling them on their bases.”
Rycroft was even more biting.
“Perhaps Russia has now learned the hard lesson that backing a war criminal comes with its own consequence: humiliation,” the UK representative said. “Assad ignores Russia’s requests for him to obey a cease-fire. Assad defies Russia’s request for him not to gas his own people. Assad thumbs his nose at Russia’s calls for Assad to join a peace process. Russia sits here today humiliated by its failure to bring to heel a puppet dictator entirely propped up by Russia itself and Hezbollah and Iran.”
Russia’s top U.N. diplomat replied by slamming the Western ambassadors for the “insult[ing] rhetoric.”
“I would have asked the speakers from the U.S. and other delegations not to insult my country,” Vladimir Safronkov, the Russian deputy ambassador to the U.N., told the Security Council. “There is no moral right to do so. We do not do so.”
“And I’d like to just say that, as Ms. Haley has just assumed her new office, that she does have a genuine opportunity and as the permanent representative of the U.S. and member of the Security Council to establish a healthy, collective work environment in the Security Council,” Safronkov added. “But this will not be done if you give the national point of view full on, what is absolute truth. I’d like first of all to ensure that we have mutually respectful work in the Security Council.”
Safronkov was less measured in his initial statement, which followed Rycroft’s remarks but preceded Haley’s comments, when he noted that a U.S.-led coalitions attempt to recapture the Iraqi city of Mosul led to civilian deaths and rebuffed Rycroft’s rebuke of Russian support for Assad.
“All Arab countries recall your colonial hypocrisy,” Safronkov said.
