NEW YORK, April 16. /TASS/. Great Britain still hopes to ensure Russia’s support for the new United Nations Security Council draft resolution on Syria, the UK’s Ambassador to the UN Karen Pierce told Fox News.
"I hope, even at this late stage, that Russia would still come back and would still help us resolve this crisis," she said, pointing out that Russia was one of the countries that "build the Chemical Weapons Convention and the global non-proliferation regime."
"I think we would much rather get back to a stage where Russia worked with the rest of the P5 [the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council] and the Security Council to find a way to bring the Assad regime to the negotiating table and get back into the political process to have a cessation of hostilities, to dismantle the chemical weapons," Great Britain’s UN ambassador noted.
On Saturday, the United Nations Security Council held a meeting on Syria - the fifth in a week - discussing the air strikes that the United States, the United Kingdom and France had claimed to be a retaliation to the alleged chemical weapons attack in the town of Douma. The meeting was called by Russia who suggested UN Security Council member states unambiguously assess the three countries’ action. However, the Security Council failed to pass a brief draft resolution submitted by Russia, which condemned the aggression against Syria and demanded that no such violation of the UN Charter be committed in the future.
On Saturday, Agence France-Presse said that the US, Great Britain and France had submitted their own draft resolution condemning the use of chemical weapons and demanding to establish an independent mechanism to investigate such incidents.