PHOTO: Russian soldiers at dinner at a base north of Hama city
The UN General Assembly’s Human Rights Committee has adopted a resolution condemning Iranian and Russian intervention in Syria.
The non-binding resolution — written by Saudi Arabia and co-sponsored by Qatar and other Arab nations, the United States and other Western powers — was adopted on Thursday by 115-15 with 51 abstentions.
The resolution said the General Assembly “strongly condemns all attacks against the Syrian moderate opposition and calls for their immediate cessation, given that such attacks benefit so-called ISIL [the Islamic State] and other terrorist groups, such as al Nusra Front”.
The text also condemned the presence in Syria of “all foreign terrorist fighters…and foreign forces fighting on behalf of the Syrian regime, particularly [Iran’s] al-Quds Brigades [and] Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and militia groups such as Hezbollah”. It demanded that all foreign militias leave Syria immediately.
Syria’s UN Ambassador Bashar Ja’afari rejected the resolution and accused its Saudi authors of hypocrisy becausee of Riyadh’s abuse of human rights such as “decapitation and flogging in public squares”. He accused the Saudis, Qatar, and Turkey of supporting “terrorists” in Syria.
Iran’s deputy UN representative, Gholamhossein Dehghani, said the resolution blurred the clear distinction between “terrorists with those who fight against them”.
