UN fails to pass truce resolution

UNITED NATIONS: The UN Security Council, facing staunch opposition from Russia, failed to pass a resolution that would have imposed a 30-day ceasefire in Syria to allow humanitarian aid to reached a besieged Damascus suburb.

With new reports on Thursday of a rocket attack that took 42 lives, the death toll this week in the rebel-held suburb, eastern Ghouta, rose to more than 300.

The suffering of civilians in Syria “brings shame on all of us”, Britain’s representative, Stephen Hickey, said at the Security Council meeting. He described the conditions in Eastern Ghouta as a “hell on earth”.

France’s ambassador, Francois Delattre, called reports of civilian deaths there “unbearable” and warned that inaction could become “the grave of the United Nations”.

But Russia’s ambassador, Vasily Nebenzia, whose veto is the lone obstacle to the resolution, dismissed the reports as disinformation and propaganda.

He accused his fellow ambassadors and UN officials of succumbing to “massive psychosis” perpetuated by the global news media, which he said had engaged in the “coordinated and repeated spread of the same rumors in recent days”.

The images of stacked bodies, burned and broken children, bombed-out hospitals and families huddling from rockets in makeshift shelters are no more than “propagandistic scenarios of catastrophe,” he said.

“You get the impression that all of eastern Ghouta consists only of hospitals and it is with them that the Syrian army is fighting,” he said. “This is a well-known method of information warfare.”

Eastern Ghouta, a cluster of farms and small towns, is one of the last major areas held by Syrian rebels.

With reports of hospitals being bombed there and shortages of food and water, the cease-fire was intended to allow humanitarian convoys to bring in food and medical supplies.

Ultimately the resolution, which was drafted by Kuwait and Sweden and supported by almost all 15 members of the Security Council, was not even put to a vote.