The Syrian authorities have notified the United Nations of breaking the siege of Deir ez-Zor, besieged by militants from the terrorist group Islamic State (outlawed in Russia) since the summer of 2014.
The USA, because of the launch of a rocket hypothetically able to hit targets in Alaska, wanted to push through the UN Security Council a statement condemning North Korea for “aggressive challenge to the world community”, which was supposed to open the way to discussion on the practice of a new package of sanctions against the DPRK and most importantly, to create the ground for pressure on China, which the US demanded to have a stronger economic pressure on North Korea, that Kim ceased to launch rockets without any preconditions.
According to some reports, the air base has resumed the flights of airplanes and helicopters.
The story with chemical attack develops quite traditional and expected. After stuffing, the militants and the West rushed to accuse “bloody Assad regime” and called the UN security Council, launched a campaign in the press, and trump even said that he changed his attitude to Assad, simultaneously kicking Obama for a prior policy and recommending Russia to change its attitude toward Assad. Russia of course denies everything, in the UN security Council prospects for any anti-Syrian resolution in the objective investigation as nobody is interested, so that the subject “chemical weapons” will be traditionally another element of the information war.
Russia and China blocked a resolution of the UN Security Council on sanctions against Syria.
Despite attempts by France and Britain to push through a UN security Council resolution against Syria, where she was accused of using weapons of mass destruction, Russia and China have veto.
The UN Office of the Special Envoy for Syria said Friday that the final planning is underway to prepare the ground ahead of intra-Syria talks which was expected to kick off on Feb.23.
“The special envoy is putting the finishing touches on the participation of the Syrian parties in the initial round of intra-Syrian negotiations,” the special envoy’s spokesperson Yara Sharif told reporters.
The delegations of Russia, Turkey and Iran as well as United Nations representatives held their first meeting on Tuesday to discuss the establishment of a ceasefire implementation regime in Syria that was decided at the 23-24 January talks held in the Kazakh capital of Astana, a UN spokesperson in Geneva said.
Priority issues will be Wadi Barada and Eastern ghouta, as well as the observance of the cease-fire. The Syrians will probably require the delivery of heavy weapons and demarcation from “Al-Nusra”. The militants are likely to insist on a cessation of hostilities until the conclusion of specific agreements. As will be discussed questions of exchange of prisoners, release of prisoners in Syrian prisons, the total disengagement “moderate” and “immoderate”, ensuring that the humanitarian needs of civilians in zones of active combat.Global agreement on the post-war settlement is not expected.
The weapons are withdrawn, the bombing of Syria has not begun. But the desire to overthrow Assad is left. So the old closet opened and pulled the charges, which now and then not proven, the more that by 2015, weapons have officially been destroyed and the United States, even taking credit in its destruction, and the international organization under whose auspices was the elimination of the Syrian WMD, received a Nobel prize for it. The militants, which the US sponsored, have used a toxic substance against the Syrians and against the Kurds. The point of course the United States never cares and the militants continue to receive a range of support, including military. And of course no one is in any hurry to return the Nobel Prize. Because “logic”.
The United Nations’ special envoy for Yemen says the warring parties in the Arab nation have agreed to a 72-hour cease-fire which will take effect just before midnight Wednesday.
A U.N. statement released Monday evening said Special Envoy Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed “welcomes the restoration of the Cessation of Hostilities, which will spare the Yemeni people further bloodshed and will allow for the expanded delivery of humanitarian assistance.”
USA can not and do not want to divide the fighters into moderate and not moderate, which is why Syria and Russia continue to arbitrarily bomb the militants, who consider it necessary, as they are mixed with the “Al-Nusra”, which the United States thus provides de facto cover.
Without the separation of militants into “Good” and “bad”, it is physically impossible to form an adequate subject of negotiations for an inter-Syrian settlement. Jihadists Assad for sure will not negotiate and he’s already made it clear that he intends to kill them, not converse with them. We will talk with sane, but go find them in the conglomerate of bearded men cutting head and sitting on foreign succor.
Libya’s UN-backed unity government suffered a blow in its Tripoli base late on Friday when a rival seized key offices in the capital and proclaimed the reinstatement of the former administration.
The Government of National Accord (GNA) was installed by the UN in April, intended to replace two rival administrations, one in Tripoli and one in the eastern Cyrenaica region.
Russia blocked in the UN Security Council France proposed a resolution to impose a cease-fire in Aleppo, Syria.
The document received 11 votes in favor, two votes against and two members abstained. Thus, Russia, which is one of the five permanent members of the UN security Council’s vetoed it.
A group of prominent scholars and political activists from various parts of the world, including the US and Europe, penned a letter to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, urging him to condemn the Bahraini regime’s decision to strip prominent Shiite Muslim cleric Sheikh Isa Qassim.
Russia will agree on no further unilateral steps to cease hostilities in Syria after the United States’ tactical tricks that gave terrorist groups time to regroup and reinforce, Russia’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations Vitaly Churkin said on Sunday at an extraordinary meeting of the Security Council.
Actually, today it was possible to observe the dying paroxysms of the 2nd Russian-American deal where the parties have plainly poured charges and laid the blame on each other. Oh well, nothing new, the war goes on (today continued fighting in Hydrate, as well as in the quarter Sheikh Saeed). The parties will have some time to do copious blood-letting, before they are ripe for a new approach in the peace talks.
“The representative of Britain, one of the three states that called for holding this session, said that Syria is ‘broken and about to die,’ and I would like to reassure him that my country hasn’t been broken and will never be broken,” al-Jaafari said, adding that the British representative’s discourse doesn’t reflect the weight of a state that is a permanent member of the Security Council.
After CIA analysts had time to evaluate U.S. satellite, electronic and other intelligence data, the U.S. government went curiously silent about what it had discovered, including the possible identity of the people who were responsible. The U.S. reticence, after the initial rush to judgment blaming Russia, suggested that the more detailed findings may have undercut those original claims.
A source who was briefed by U.S. intelligence analysts told me that the CIA’s conclusion pointed toward a rogue Ukrainian operation involving a hard-line oligarch with the possible motive of shooting down Russian President Vladimir Putin’s official plane returning from South America that day, with similar markings as MH-17. But I have been unable to determine if that assessment represented a dissident or consensus view inside the U.S. intelligence community.
The United States is preparing sanctions against firms and individuals in Iran, Hong Kong and the United Arab Emirates over alleged links to Iran’s ballistic missile program, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday.
Such a move would be the first American sanctions against Iran since Tehran signed a nuclear deal with world powers in July that will eventually see Washington drop separate sanctions targeting that program.
