UN, December 18. /TASS/. The UN Security Council will consider France’s initiative to deploy an United Nations monitoring mission in Aleppo to contol the evacuation of citizens from eastern quarters of the city during the day, an official with New Zealand’s permanent mission at the UN told TASS.
According to the official the vote will take place on Sunday, December 18, at 10:00 New York time.
France’s draft resolution, the copy of which was obtained by TASS, takes into consideration "efforts on evacuation of peaceful citizens and opposition militants from the sieged quarters of Aleppo." The document stresses that this operation "should be conducted in compliance with international humanitarian right," and peaceful citizens should be given an opportunity to independently choose their destination.
According to the draft resolution, the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon should charge the employees who are already in the region of Aleppo "to conducer a competent, impartial monitoring", reporting on the progress of the evacuation of people and the situation with safety of civilians. The document calls on all parties to the conflict to give the monitors "an immediate and impartial access" to perform these tasks. At the same time Secretary General is obliged to report within 5 days about whether the UN staff was admitted to the scene.
On Friday, Russia’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations Vitaly Churkin told reporters that it will take weeks to send an international mission to Aleppo to monitor the process of evacuation of people from the city’s eastern quarters.
He reminded that a 300-strong United Nations monitoring mission had been deployed in Syria in 2012 at the request of the United States. That mission was preceded by a monitoring mission from the League of Arab States. Now, officers of the International Committee of the Red Cross are working in Aleppo, Churkin said, adding that Russia hopes there will be more possibilities for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) after Aleppo’s eastern quarters are liberated from terrorists.
France’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations Francois Delattre said earlier on Friday his country plans to initiate a resolution on deploying an international mission to monitor and coordinate evacuation of people from Eastern Aleppo.
Diplomats of US and France warned on Friday that if the idea of the resolution fails to find support in the UN Security Council they will call for holding an extraordinary special session of the UN General Assembly. This will allow General Assembly to adopt the resolution under the "Uniting for Peace" formula that was worked out in 1950. A Uniting for Peace resolution would recommend countries to take joint steps to secure peace in Syria under pretense of failure of the UN Security Council to carry out its tasks.