Moscow: No need for new UN text on Syria, Lebanon

By Irwin Arieff
May 10, 2006 
Reuters
Original Source: http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N10422353.htm

UNITED NATIONS, May 10 (Reuters) - Russia on Wednesday dismissed calls for a new U.N. Security Council resolution intensifying international efforts to end Syrian involvement in Lebanon, just as Britain, France and the United States agreed to circulate a draft text on the matter.

We do not feel any need for big moves now, Russian U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said.

As far as we are concerned. everything is working fine now between Lebanon and Syria, he told reporters.

But U.S. Ambassador John Bolton said the text backed by London, Paris and Washington would soon be circulated among the council's 15 members and he hoped for fairly prompt action.

Agreement among the three had been hampered by differences between the United States and France over the text's breadth.

Bolton had wanted the council to react to a recent report from U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, urging formal diplomatic ties and a full demarcation of the border between the two countries, and disarmament of the Iranian- and Syrian-backed Hizbollah militia in the south.

Annan's report, prepared by U.N. envoy Terje Roed-Larsen, looked at the implementation of Security Council resolution 1559 of September 2004, which called on Syria to pull out of Lebanon and on Beirut to disarm militias on its soil so the government could extend its control to all of its territory.

Bolton had also wanted the new text to go beyond resolution 1559 by putting new obligations on Hizbollah and Iran.

But French Ambassador Jean-Marc de la Sabliere had contemplated a narrower measure, fearing the U.S. approach might bog down in the council. British Ambassador Emyr Jones Parry had tried to mediate between the two.

Syria, for its part, had argued that setting borders and diplomatic ties were none of the council's business.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy worked out the details of the draft ultimately embraced by all three over dinner on Tuesday.

Council diplomats said the compromise draft would not mention Iran or Hizbollah by name.

But Bolton said: We've worked out a formulation where it will be clear when it is circulated later today that the behavior of Iran in Lebanon, as with the behavior of Syria, will be covered.

Syria withdrew from Lebanon in April 2005. Syria and Lebanon have not had embassies on each other's territory since Western powers carved the two states out of the remnants of the Ottoman empire in 1920. Damascus says its many bilateral ties rather than embassies suffice for the present.