Syria: more UN assembly speeches, one less UNESCO site
Fierce fighting in Aleppo left a UNESCO World Heritage Site in tatters as world leaders left the UN General Assembly meeting no closer to a resolution for the 19-month conflict.
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Perhaps, worse of all, is to see permanent members of the Security Council, who launched wars under the pretext of combating terrorism, now support terrorism in my country....
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Latin America Editor
Whitney Eulich is the Monitor's Latin America editor, overseeing regional coverage for CSMonitor.com and the weekly magazine. She also curates the Latin America Monitor Blog.
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For more than one year now, my country has been facing organized terrorism, that affected our citizens, our human and scientific resources, national establishments, and also much of Syria's historic and archeological landmarks through terrorist bombings, assassinations and massacres, looting and sabotage activities that horrified citizens in many parts of Syria.
Moallem said calls for President Bashar al-Assad to step down were "blatant interference in the domestic affairs of Syria, and the unity of its people and its sovereignty," though he did call for dialogue with the rebels, which was derided by George Sabra, an opposition spokesman for the opposition umbrella organization, the Syrian National Council.
"From day one, the regime played the same tune, call[ing] for political solution while ordering mass killing all across the homeland. They keep putting themselves in a political corner ... while their military keeps its systematic killing spree, murdering hundreds of innocent men and women every single day," Mr. Sabra told CNN.
Following sideline talks with Moallem yesterday, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon “stressed that it was the Syrian people who were being killed every day, and appealed to the government of Syria to show compassion to its own people,” according to the UN press office.
In one of the more shocking claims, Moallem also noted that refugees fleeing Syria had been duped by neighboring countries that were trying to create an artificial crisis in order to receive international aid.
Hundreds of thousands of Syrians have fled to neighboring countries to escape violence since the conflict broke out. With fighting showing no sign of abating, thousands of Syrian refugees are stuck along the Turkish border in poor conditions, waiting to enter overcrowded camps in Turkey, reports CNN. In Jordan, where the government is struggling to cope with the 100,000 Syrian refugees who have already arrived, most locals oppose allowing more into the country, reports The Christian Science Monitor.
The UN refugee agency has warned that the outflow of Syrians to neighboring countries, such as Turkey, Jordan, Iraq, and Lebanon, is a major humanitarian problem that could destabilize the region.
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