Clinton urges UNSC to act 'fast' on Syria

[1]

The US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, has urged the UN Security Council to act 'fast' on Syria, and make it clear to its regime that the international community views its actions as a 'threat' to peace and security.

"The Security Council must act and make clear to the Syrian regime that the world community views its actions as a threat to peace and security.

"The violence must end, so that a new period of democratic transition can begin," Clinton said in a statement yesterday.

Clinton said she would be attending the UN Security Council meeting on Syria on Tuesday.

"Tomorrow, I will attend a United Nations Security Council meeting on Syria where the international community should send a clear message of support to the Syrian people: we stand with you," she said.

In fact, Clinton would be joined by the French foreign minister at the UN headquarters in New York as the 15-membered powerful body including India and Pakistan to discuss a Arab League resolution on this issues, which was presented to the body on Monday.

Several Arab ministers and ministers from Security Council member countries are expected to participate in the meeting.

The Arab League is backing a resolution that calls on the international community to support its ongoing efforts, because the status quo is unsustainable, she said.

"The longer the Assad regime continues its attacks on the Syrian people and stands in the way of a peaceful transition, the greater the concern that instability will escalate and spill over throughout the region," Clinton said.

Condemning in the escalation of the Syrian regime's attacks on its people, Clinton said in the past few days there has been intensification of Syrian security operations all around the country which have killed hundreds of civilians.

"The government has shelled civilian areas with mortars and tank fire and brought down whole buildings on top of their occupants.

"The violence has escalated to the point that the Arab League has had to suspend its monitoring mission," she said.

The regime has failed to meet its commitments to the Arab League to halt its acts of violence, withdraw its military forces from residential areas, allow journalists and monitors to operate freely and release prisoners arrested because of the current unrest, Clinton said.

Her spokesperson told reporters in Washington that the Secretary of State has been talking to several of her counterparts from other countries so as to pass the resolution on Syria.

"Our hope and expectation is that tomorrow will be a very strong opening conversation on this draft resolution after hearing the report of the Arab League.

"And as you'll see tomorrow, the resolution very much supports the goals that the Arab League has been pushing for some time," the State Department spokesperson, Victoria Nuland, told reporters at her daily news conference.

The UNSC draft resolution, she said, focuses on the UN Security Council's insistence that the regime meet the same four conditions that were in the Arab League's agreement with the regime of November 22nd that it never fulfilled.

"As you know, the Arab League's now given up and shuttered its own mission because of the violence and because it isn't able to operate � and finally, that the political prisoners be released and that press be allowed in," she said.