Russia believes a draft U.N. resolution on aid access in Syria is aimed at creating grounds for military intervention and would veto the document in its current form, RIA news agency quoted Gennady Gatilov, the Russian Deputy Foreign Minister as saying on Wednesday, according to Reuters.
“It is unacceptable to us in the form in which it is now being prepared, and we, of course, will not let it through,” Gatilov said speaking about a Western-Arab draft that was debated in the U.N. Security Council.
On Tuesday, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the draft was unacceptable because it was “absolutely one-sided.”
“The ideas that were shared with us by those initiating this process... are absolutely unacceptable and contain an ultimatum for the government, that if they don't solve all this in two weeks then we automatically introduce sanctions,” Lavrov said in Moscow, in statements carried by Agence France-Presse.
“Instead of engaging in everyday, meticulous work to resolve problems that block deliveries of humanitarian aid, they see a new resolution as some kind of simplistic solution,” he said.
U.N. diplomats have tried to persuade Russia to back a new resolution, drafted by Australia, Jordan and Luxembourg, which “demands that all parties, in particular the Syrian authorities, immediately end the sieges of the Old City of Homs.”
But Lavrov said focusing on one city and the government's role was “absolutely one-sided and detached from the facts.”
“It’s as if there are no witness accounts, even from the humanitarian agencies, that the militant groups are the main impediments to the humanitarian operation in Homs and in delivering humanitarian aid to the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp,” he said.
A second round of Syria peace talks - known as the Geneva II talks - got off to a shaky start on Monday, with the two sides complaining about violations of a local ceasefire and an Islamist offensive in the war torn country.
