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Conflict in Syria

Russian diplomat says UN draft resolution on Syria needs major rework

Russian diplomats continue working towards this, according to Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov

© EPA/JASON SZENES

MOSCOW, April 6. /TASS/. A UN draft resolution on the attack on Syrian Khan Shaykhun needs to be fundamentally reworked, and Russian diplomats continue working towards this, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said on Thursday.

The bottom line the Wednesday’s draft resolution is to put all blame on Damascus so that to increase pressure on Damascus, the diplomat said. "It is inadmissible for us in this context," he added.

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"We must fundamentally rework the text, which we tried to bring to the notice of everybody yesterday, and we continue this work today," the top diplomat said, explaining that the Russian ambassadors are showing disagreement in all capital cities of the UN Security Council countries.

"If we agree with other members of the UN Security Council that this is a correct and reasonable approach (carrying out an investigation directly in Khan Shaykhun - TASS), no new resolution will be needed," he said.

"However, if the approach towards putting more pressure on Damascus prevails, then we won’t come to terms in New York," he went on. "Then the UN Security Council will see a new division, which, of course, would be undesirable," Ryabkov added.

Draft resolution

The US, UK and France submitted their draft resolution to the United Nations Security Council’s emergency meeting held on Wednesday. The resolution was drafted following an alleged air strike in the town of Khan Shaykhun by Syrian government warplanes in a suspected chemical weapons attack. The draft resolution demands that the Damascus government cooperate with the international team of investigators. It also threatens the country with sanctions in case of non-compliance.

Read also

The resolution condemns the "use of chemical weapons in the Syrian Arab Republic, in particular the attack on Khan Shaykhun reported on 4 April 2017" and expresses full support to an investigation by the Fact Finding Mission (FFM) by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) and the Joint Investigative Mechanism (JIM) of the UN and the OPCW.

The resolution also calls on the Syrian government to cooperate fully with the international investigators, including by providing them with "flight plans, flight logs, and any other information on air operations, including all flight plans or flight logs filed on April 4 2017."

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Sergey Ryabkov Syrian conflict

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