UN admits being late on civil war in Syria

The United Nations Security Council was late to act on the Syrian crisis, and it is becoming increasingly difficult to achieve a solution as radical groups gain ground in the ongoing civil war, the international body’s deputy secretary-general, Jan Eliasson, has admitted.

“We regret very much that there has not been any unity in the council for such a long time. Radical extreme groups have been growing in importance during this period. These groups in the field are much stronger when compared to a year or two years ago,” Eliasson told the Hürriyet Daily News in an interview yesterday.

The deputy secretary-general was in Istanbul to meet Foreign Minister Ahmet Davuto?lu over U.N. developments in Syria, Cyprus and Somalia, as well as on the conditions of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar.

The five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council – Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States – have veto powers on the panel. Russia, Syria’s staunchest ally, as well as China, have already vetoed three resolutions condemning Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government and threatening it with U.N. sanctions.

An estimated 120,000 people have been killed in the war-ravaged country, with the sectarian conflict now spilling into neighboring countries. Extremist and al-Qaeda-linked groups like the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIS) and the al-Nusra Front have gained ground in the last year in the northern parts of the country with no solution in sight.


/HurriyetDailynews/