UN debating call for cease-fire in war-torn Syria

BEIRUT — World leaders called Thursday for an urgent cease-fire in Syria as government forces pounded the opposition-controlled eastern suburbs of the capital in a crushing campaign that has left hundreds of people dead in recent days.

The U.N. Security Council heard a briefing from U.N. humanitarian chief Mark Lowcock on what he called “the humanitarian disaster unfolding before our eyes” in the rebel-held suburbs of Damascus known as eastern Ghouta. Sweden and Kuwait were seeking a vote on a resolution ordering a 30-day cease-fire to allow relief agencies to deliver aid and evacuate the critically sick and wounded from besieged areas. But Russia’s U.N. ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia, put forward last-minute amendments, saying the proposed resolution was “simply unrealistic.”

Russia’s amendments would rule out an immediate cease-fire and instead demand that all parties “stop hostilities as soon as possible” and “work for an immediate and unconditional de-escalation of violence” and 30-day “humanitarian pause.”

The Russian proposal also would condemn the “the ongoing attempts by terrorist groups to retake areas and attack civilians and civilian objects.”

Several council diplomats who examined the draft said it was unacceptable.

The Trump administration, meanwhile, has decided that it needs no new legal authority from Congress to indefinitely keep U.S. military forces deployed in Syria and Iraq, even in territory that has been cleared of Islamic State fighters, according to Pentagon and State Department officials.

In a pair of letters, the officials illuminated the Trump administration’s planning for an open-ended mission of forces in Syria beyond the Islamic State fight. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has said that troops will stay in Syria to curb Iran and prevent the Syrian government from reconquering rebel-held areas.