Syrian Arab News Agency S A N A
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New York, SANA – Syria’s Permanent Representative to the UN, Dr. Bashar al-Jaafari stressed that endangering the lives of 8 million civilians in Damascus in order to protect terrorists in Eastern Ghouta is unacceptable act.
Al-Jaafari made his remarks during a UN Security Council meeting held on Thursday to discuss the situation in Syria.
He added that the draft resolution submitted by Kuwait and Sweden to the UN Security Council was not coordinated with Syria – the very country impacted by that text – in any way, which is a big shame.
The Syrian diplomat noted that terrorist groups situated in the Eastern Ghouta and designated as terrorist organizations by the UN Security Council have been targeting Damascus with hundreds of rocket and mortar shells on a daily basis, causing the death and injury of dozens of civilians.
Such incidents are not surprising because whenever there is a UNSC meeting to discuss the Syrian affair, a massacre or a suicidal bombing takes place, said al-Jaafari, adding countless massacres had taken place all over Syria during the past seven years, and were well documented in the hundreds of letters sent to the United Nations.
He added that neither stories nor the Syrian viewpoint reached the ears of the Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, Mark Lowcock, the way letters sent by the so-called humanitarian aid workers in the Eastern Ghouta area did.
Al-Jaafari said that those who used the word “regime” in this session when talking about Syria have dropped all pretense of objectivity and neutrality, furthermore they reveal the involvement of their countries in what is taking place in the Syria.
He expressed gratitude to Russia for its call upon the UNSC to hold an open-door session and give him the opportunity to highlight the suffering of Syrian civilians and citizens due to the practices of the armed terrorist groups which continued to spread destruction and death over the past seven years, used civilians as human shields and turned schools and hospitals under their control into military positions and bases for firing rocket and mortar shells on safe residential areas, rejecting the description by France’s delegate of such actions as a form of resistance.
The US-led coalition has moved from the stage of proxy aggression on Syria to a one of actual aggression in order to achieve what the terrorists failed to achieve, al-Jaafari added.
He said it is clear that the US, France and Britain sought to deprive the Syrian government of its sovereign right to defend its territory and people as laid out in the United Nations Charter.
“Let’s imagine for one second that if such a situation, where terrorists continuously targeted civilians, were occurring in Paris, New York or London, would any one refer to them as moderate or non-State armed opposition groups, as they did with those committing crimes in Syria,” added al-Jaafari.
He noted that the United Nations continues to turn blind eyes and deaf ears to the Israeli occupation’s repeated attacks on the Syrian territory within the framework of its support to the terrorist groups, not to mention overlooking the US-led international coalition’s crimes including the complete destruction of Raqqa city under pretext of fighting Daesh terrorist organization and ignoring the Turkish aggression on Afrin area.
Al-Jaafari said the aforementioned facts stress that this international organization suffers a professional and ethical crisis through adopting the stances of states which support terrorism in Syria through direct involvement in distorting facts, manipulating numbers and relying on dubious sources in its reports, not to mention denying the right of the Syrian government to defend its citizens.
“We are certain that these practices will continue and some UN bodies will overlook the urgent serious information we submitted about the armed terrorist groups’ preparations for a new “big spectacle” which suggests that the Syrian government has used toxic chemicals against civilians in the Eastern Ghouta where these groups fabricate evidence, train its members to act as if they are exposed to these toxic materials in order to be photographed by known media networks and Lowcock’s reporters and accuse the Syrian Arab army of this crime, said al-Jaafari.
He noted that the Syrian government has consistently sent letters to the UN Secretary General and President of the UN Security Council for like 2 months documenting the number of victims and material damage as well as the shells which rained down on Damascus over the past few weeks and reached 1200 shells.
Allegations made by international and UN sources about “suffocating siege” of the Eastern Ghouta are denied by facts on the ground since the talks is mainly about a key area which constitutes the essential resource for food, said al-Jaafari, adding that the Syrian government facilitates the delivery of humanitarian aid and the evacuation of medical cases whenever possible.
It is no secret that the armed terrorist organizations control humanitarian aid convoys which enter the Eastern Ghouta, distribute them on their members and arrest anyone who protests their practices.
Al-Jaafari asked the Secretariat to provide justifications for overlooking information and reports submitted by the Syrian government regarding thousands of hostages and abductees in al-Tawbah Prison controlled by the armed terrorist groups in Ghouta.
Responding to those who voiced concern that Eastern Ghouta could be turned into a “second Aleppo”, al-Jaafari invited them to visit Aleppo today, where millions of civilians had safely returned home and get back to their normal lives following the city’s liberation from terrorism.
“We will never succumb to the blackmail of those who support terrorism in Syria and we will no longer tolerate the plans set up by the five countries that had met in Washington in January with the aim to divide up Syria, undermine the Syrian National Dialogue Congress in Sochi and foil the entire political process,” stressed al-Jaafari, pledging that the world would soon understand how hard Syria and its allies had fought against terrorism.
The UN Security Council has postponed voting on the draft resolution submitted by Kuwait and Sweden on the situation in Syria till Friday.
Rasha Raslan/Mazen
