Russia, U.S. spar over Syria in U.N. vote

UNITED NATIONS — Russia and the Donald Trump administration clashed in a vote at the U.N. Security Council for the first time Tuesday as the Kremlin vetoed a measure backed by the Americans to punish Syria for using chemical weapons.

While the Russians had long signaled their intent to block the resolution, which was supported by dozens of countries, including the United States, the clash offered insights into the big divides that remain between the Kremlin and President Trump, who has vowed to improve ties.

The vote in the 15member council was nine in favor and three against. Opponents included Russia and China, two of the five veto-wielding permanent members of the council, and Bolivia, a nonpermanent member. Three nonpermanent members — Egypt, Ethiopia and Kazakhstan — abstained.

It was the Kremlin’s seventh Security Council veto in defense of President Bashar Assad of Syria over the war that has been convulsing his country for nearly six years.

The U.S. ambassador, Nikki R. Haley, who has called chemical weapons attacks in Syria “barbaric,” accused Russia and China of putting “their friends in the Assad regime ahead of our global security” in her blunt rebuke of the vetoes.

“It’s a sad day for the Security Council when members make excuses for other member states killing their own people,” she said in the council chambers.

The resolution, proposed by Britain and France months ago and endorsed by the U.S. last week, would have imposed sanctions on a handful of Syrian military officials and entities for having dropped chlorine-filled barrel bombs on opposition-held areas on at least three occasions in 2014 and 2015, according to a U.N. panel.

Russia’s envoy, Vladimir Safronkov, defended the veto, calling the resolution “politically biased” and asserting that Russia’s concerns about the draft language had not been addressed. “This is railroading the draft by the Western troika,” he said.

China’s ambassador, Liu Jieyi, recalling the nowdiscredited U.S. warnings of Iraq’s “so-called WMDs” in 2003, criticized the resolution as an example of “hypocrisy” by the Western powers. “It was forced through to a vote while council members still have differences,” he said. “This is in no way helpful to finding a solution.”

Chlorine is banned as a weapon under an international treaty that Assad’s government signed in 2013.