UN envoy Ja'afari: West subverts political process in Syria

Syria’s permanent representative to the United Nations says some permanent members of the Security Council are desperately attempting to undermine the political process in Syria.

Speaking at a United Nations session on the situation in Syria via a video link on Wednesday, Bashar al-Ja’afari said Western pressures have hindered the 15-member council from playing its role in preserving the rules of the UN Charter.

“Since the adoption of the political process by Security Council as a basis for solution to the crisis in Syria, some permanent member countries in this council have sought to hinder this approach to the degree that a number of these countries unfortunately turned to use it practically to support the terrorist war on Syria,” he said.

Al-Jaafari said a national team is ready to participate in the next round of a committee meetings that will be held in the Swiss city of Geneva.

The Syrian envoy also demanded that this process should remain Syrian-led without any external pressure or intervention. He went on to say that the principles that have been agreed upon and the references that have been reached must be respected.

Under a UN-backed process, Damascus in recent years has discussed the formation of a constitutional committee that could pave the way for a political solution to the country’s eight-year conflict, and mechanisms that would guarantee its effectiveness.

UNSC unanimously approves Syria peace process resolution

The UN Security Council has unanimously adopted a resolution to endorse an international bid to end the nearly five-year-long crisis in Syria.

Damascus reiterated that the constitutional committee should be a purely Syrian affair to be decided by the Syrian people alone without any foreign interference.

Writing a new constitution for a post-war Syria is part of a potential political solution to end the nine-year crisis in the Arab country.

To that end, an agreement was reached in the Russian town of Sochi two years ago for the formation of a UN-backed constitutional committee composed of 50 members from the incumbent Damascus government, 50 opposition members, and another 50 independent figures chosen by the world body. 

Elsewhere in his remarks, al-Jaafari voiced concern over the council's silence toward the US occupation of Syrian territories and Washington's support for terrorist groups operating across the Arab country.

“The US behavior, which contradicts the international law and the UN Charter and the Security Council resolutions, didn’t come suddenly as the American administration has persisted through its illegal coalition to launch repeated attacks over the Syrian Arab Army forces to prevent them from liberating the regions that were occupied by terrorist organization such as Daesh in the northeast of Syria,” he said.

The ambassador also said the US had recently carried out an airstrike in Syria’s northeastern province of Hasakah, killing a soldier and injuring two others.

US choppers attack Syrian army checkpoint in Hasakah, kill soldier

The US military has carried out an airstrike on Syria’s northeastern province of Hasakah, killing a soldier and injuring two others.

The airstrike reportedly took place after a government checkpoint refused passage to a US patrol that tried to break into a zone controlled by the Syrian Army. Two helicopters are said to have conducted the attack.

The US has been conducting airstrikes and operations against what are said to be Daesh targets inside Syria since September 2014 without any authorization from Damascus or a United Nations mandate. The US military and its allies in the occupation of Syria have repeatedly been accused of targeting and killing civilians.

The Syrian envoy also strongly condemned an agreement recently signed between the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) militant group and an American oil company aimed at stealing the country's oil.

Syria and its allies in the war on terrorism have said US attempts to control Syria’s oilfields are “illegal” and amount to “robbery.”

Damascus condemns

Damascus strongly lambastes as null an agreement between a US oil company and the SDF militant group for stealing the Syrian oil.

US support for the SDF has also infuriated Washington's NATO ally, Turkey, which views militants from the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) – the backbone of the SDF – as a terrorist organization tied to the homegrown Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) that has been engaged in a destructive war inside Turkey for decades.

The presence of US-supported YPG militants in northern and northeastern parts of Syria has prompted Turkey, for its part, to conduct a cross-border incursion into the Arab country to purportedly eliminate the Kurdish militants and occupy a long narrow border area in Syria's north.

The Arab country has been gripped by foreign-backed militancy since March 2011. The Syrian government says the Israeli regime and its Western and regional allies are aiding Takfiri terrorist groups that are wreaking havoc in the country.

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