Moscow confirms that any refusal by any party of the Russian draft resolution on the transfer of humanitarian aid to Syria reveals politicization of the file

Russia confirmed that any rejection of the draft resolution on the transfer of humanitarian aid to Syria which is scheduled to be put to the vote today in the UN Security Council will reveal the fact that some countries use the aid issue as a political game.

 “Russia submitted a compromise draft on humanitarian aid in Syria and its lack of support by our Security Council partners will show that the matter was for them a political game more than a wish to help the people of Syria”, Russia Today quoted Dmitry Polianski, Russia’s Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations, as saying on Twitter on Wednesday.

Russia’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Vasily Nebenzia, has announced recently that Moscow would submit today a draft resolution to the UN Security Council on the transfer of humanitarian aid to Syria, stating that humanitarian aid cannot be transferred to Syria without the approval of its government.

Nebenzia stressed that the draft resolution submitted by Germany, Belgium and Kuwait in this regard is unacceptable.

The Russian draft resolution provides for the extension of the work of the current mechanism for the transfer of humanitarian aid for a period of half a year and not for a year, as required by the draft resolution submitted by Germany, Belgium and Kuwait. The Russian draft also stresses the need to specify two of the four crossings to transport aid.

It is noteworthy that the UN Security Council adopted Resolution No. 2165, which authorized humanitarian convoys heading to Syria to cross the border. The validity of the resolution will be extended every year, and this mechanism is still in place since July 2014.

Inas Abdulkareem