Posted on 10/26/2005 2:36:40 PM PDT by lizol
Russia says will defend Syria against U.N. sanctions
MOSCOW - Russia, Syria's close ally since Cold War times, will do all it takes to block any attempt to impose economic sanctions on Damascus, a Foreign Ministry spokesman was quoted as saying on Wednesday.
The United States and France threatened Syria with economic sanctions earlier this week if Damascus did not cooperate fully with a U.N. probe into the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. "Russia will do everything necessary to stop attempts to introduce sanctions against Syria," spokesman Mikhail Kalmynin told Interfax news agency and other Russian media on the sidelines of Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov's trip to Israel.
Lavrov made no mention of this stance at a news conference in Jerusalem, and reiterated that Russia had called on Syria to cooperate with the U.N. investigation. Russia, a veto-wielding permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, angered the United States earlier this year by announcing plans to sell advanced missile systems to Syria, which Washington has accused of having links to terrorism.
A draft resolution, also backed by Britain and circulated to the 15 U.N. Security Council members, demands Damascus detain possible suspects in the assassination probe and make them available to U.N. investigators, who have complained about Syria's cooperation. If Syria does not do this, the text says, the Council would consider "further measures", such as economic sanctions, "to ensure compliance".
Lavrov will seek at next week's discussions at the Security Council in New York to make sure any resolution calls for the investigation to be fair and objective, Kalmynin said. "Russia will accept the conclusions in this international report," Lavrov said during a news conference with Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom. "Russia calls on Syria to cooperate with the Mehlis committee ... President Putin said as much in his telephone conversation with Bashar Assad yesterday."
"We are also certain that the Security Council will support our position," added Lavrov, whose comments in Russian were communicated to reporters in Hebrew by a translator. Both U.S. President George W. Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have refused to rule out the possibility of military action against Syria, but said Washington has not exhausted its diplomatic options.
In Russia itself you are right for now--unfortunately majority of Russians are AntiAmerican. It's partly thanks to the Clinton Administration carousing with the corrupt Yeltsin regime, partly to the Cold War left overs and partly its due to centuries old antiWestern sentiments often induced by the ruling clans to justify their absolute hold on power.
However, in the United States, you can find that most of Russians are well integrated into the American life if you look deep enough. If your knowledge of Russian Communities in the US is limited to the Brighton Beach nightclubs, restaurants, or grocery shops, you might think otherwise, but Russian/Russian Speaking Americans are Spread across the country and you can meet them in a number of large or medium sized companies and colleges working, studying, etc.. In a New York as far as I know, younger Russians try to live in places like Manhattan, New Jersey, etc--not Brighton Beach enclave.
Here is some interesting statistics of the Russian Speakers in the LA Area I digged.
http://www.prgroup.info/news/26102005.72/article.html
It seems you're being racist...
So far, the American invasion have turned Iraq from a secular Qaeda-free dictatorship into an anarchy and haven for terrorists. It also boosted oil prices. You'll get another Iraq (and Vietnam in several years, yes, it was all right in Vietnam at first, too) in Syria. If Russia fails in her attempt to save the USA from another blunder in Middle East.
Already American resourses are stretched (remember Louisiana National Guard). A Russian proverb: where it's thin, it tears.
Some people here have mentioned Russian anti-Americanism. Its extents seems to be over-estimated. However, sending bombers all over earth doesn't help promote love to America. You start to think who's next.
I've read invectives above about unpleasant "Russian" communities in Brooklyn and Brighton Beach. It's funny; people don't realise that they are not only being politically incorrect and racist, but much, much worse -- anti-Semitic. For those ghettos are populated by Jews, not Russians.
And of course this week a big new movie premiers worshiping Edward R Murrow for his destruction of Joseph MCCarthy and his Red Scare ( no Communists in DC no sir!/sarcasm). No doubt with Heavy Symbolism for a certain Right Wing Extremist President.
"You'll get another Iraq (and Vietnam in several years, yes, it was all right in Vietnam at first, too) in Syria. If Russia fails in her attempt to save the USA from another blunder in Middle East."
Some of US Americans know who it was that promoted and funded that Vietnam War. Russia HAS NEVER EVER been about saving anybody but themselves.
Also Putin who is to host the next G8-Summit said it is to be about "energy security", so what does Syria have to do with Russia's energy security other than setting up shop right next door to old Saddam's former oil fields?
Just mythoughts, you underestimate Russian rotten idealism.
I'd love if you were right, and Russia always saved but herself (which is not criminal by Western standards, by the way). Unfortunately, it is not so.
Cynics in Russia say, we should help the USA to get involved into various messy affairs like Afghanistan, with no hope of any positive outcome. The more "Shock and Awes", the less troups and money the Americans will be left to meddle in our affairs. Saving our lives and freedom at the expence of Arabs is immoral, yes, but, on the other hand, isn't all world politics immoral? Nevertheless, Mr. Putin is not cynical enough to run a big country successfully. He's just lucky.
Syria has nothing to do with Russian energy security -- we've got our own oil. Unfortunately for her, Syria is too close to the oilfields from which Europe, Japan and the USA are supplied.
> Well I cannot disagree with the results of Russian
> attempts to save herself, and one would think some
> lessons might be learned.
Unfortunately, my English is too poor to understand you adequately. Do you mean that Russia was too successful in her attempts at saving herself? Or not successful enough? Or do you mean that Russia saved those who didn't want to get saved by the Russians? And who should learn lessons? The misguided Russians or the careless Americans?
> What I see transforming out of Russia is the attempted
> projection that "capitalism" is the method of operation.
You mean that the Russian are trying hard to act capitalist but aren't good at it yet? Perhaps.
> I see nothing capitalistic in bedding down with the
> likes of Syria, Iran, N.Korea, and Chavez to our south.
Well, as far as I understand capitalism, you bed down, as you put it, with anybody, if it pays off. I don't think there is anything especially horrible about Syria etc. It's just they're our sons-of-a-bitch, whereas the rest are yours.
> I would say the cynics are in full implementation of
> this plan, and are gearing up to take advantage.
Then simply leave the outcast states alone, and that'll frustrate the cynics' plan.
> Yes Russia does indeed have plenty of oil, so that being
> the case what advantage does it gain Russia to meddle
> with the suppliers of oil to Europe, Japan and the
> USA????
Russia is in no position to meddle with anything. It's just trying to preserve what is left of law of nations. Not only of idealism, but also in order to save herself from a future "Shock and Awe".
> Could it be that Russia seeks to be the controller of the worlds oil???
No, it couldn't. Most of world's oil is under firm control by the USA. And somebody like Brzezinski (if I spell his surname right) has openly declared that it is America's goal to control all of it.
Just mythoughts, I see.
Unfortunately, Russia cannot follow your way of salvation. Our version of Christianity doesn't justify bombing and otherwise beating whole nations into Stone Age. Nor does our, possibly naive, understanding of human rights.
You, like many other Americans, seem misinformed about the connection between Syrian and former Iraqi regimes and the islamic terrorism. There is none. Those regimes are secular, originally socialist and opposed to radical Islam. Shortly: Saddam Hussein couldn't give orders to Usama Ben Laden.
To JasonC: the red line just below the button "Word Wrap: ON" reads: "Loose lips sink ships".
> There is a veneer of civilized Westernized Russians...
So, in your opition, civilisation == westernisation?
:) What about multiculturalism?
And yes, Western civilization far exceeds All others.
Once upon a time, even the Czar of Russian accepted that and set off to become more civilized ( read WESTERN )and you folks added Great, to Peter's name.
>We don't espouse Multiculturalism here on FR.
Oh, I see. It's a conservative resource. I got here via direct links to pages.
It is funny, then, that a "thin veneer of civilised Russians" is mentioned here. Because those, luckily, few "civilised" Russians are liberals of the worst sort. Sickeningly multicultural. The very kind of people you ought to despise. So should be the guy who referred to them.
Russian conservatives, on the other hand, do not think of themselves as "westernised" and never treat westernisation as a synonym of civilisation.
> And yes, Western civilization far exceeds All others.
A useful and laudable conviction for any conservative (after substitution of his own civilisation).
> Once upon a time, even the Czar of Russian accepted that
> and set off to become more civilized ( read WESTERN )and
> you folks added Great, to Peter's name.
This is a matter far too complex to be discussed on a forum. There are different opinions on the nature of Peter the Great's reforms and his greatness. One of the immediate results, however, is certain: a great European power of that time, Sweden, was crushed. If that "thin veneer" gets thick, and you are right about the value of Westernisation, it may come to Russians removing another superpower, say, the USA. Do you really want that?
Russia's muslim problem is properly characterized as 100x worse than France. Nor will they learn the lesson of Beslan or the French Intifada-- appeasing the Muslims or their proxy states is suicidal. What the Russians do have the French do not is an iron will to kill without remorse (or competence, unfortunately).
And old Saddam did NOT have weapons of mass destruction. However hard the Americans were seeking for them before and after 'Shoch and Awe", they haven't found any.
Not having the bomb -- that is what was his undoing.
Not watching the CNN, I don't understand what Saddam refused. His country was searched for weapons both before and after the Second Gulf War, as I have already said.
And, however bad the Ba'athist regimes be, they are a kind of jerks different from Islamic terrorists. They are enemies. It took an American occupation to turn Iraq into a nest of terrorists.
Another coincidence: the Talibs in their last year supressed the heroin manufacturing. After the liberation of Afghanistan it renewed.
There are, and have been, more Dostoevskys than Tergenevs. The Slavophiles in the majority have long deserved the epithet, scratch a Russian and a Tatar bleeds. And please, do not talk about capitalism in Russia; there is the very thinest of veneers at work there too in a nation where cronyism abounds. And when you talk of religiosity, what is it that you mean? The meaningless drone of Russian Orthodoxy, the supercilious pacifism of Tolstoi, or something else like a resurgence of the "Old Believers"? And what is Russian civilization? Is it the onion-domed churches created by Western architects, the buildings of St. Petersburg created by Western architects, the tsarist gems created by French and worn by European monarchichal families? Or is the Kremlin Walls, the perfect personifaction of the walled personality defying all entry from foreign sources?
I'm not the one who posted the :"thin veneer of civilized Russians" quote. But since you seem to revel in barbarism, the other poster wasn't really all that far off. And if you think that WESTERNISED" is a dirty word, then I suggest that you've been brainwashed to within an inch of your life.
And again, nobody here on FR, is pro multiculturalism; a term you appear to not truly understand.
When Peter made his European tour, your nation was living in conditions far removed from the then minimum level of technology. But hey, if you want to return to a pre Peter time, you can always become an al Quaeda/Taliban type Muslim and allow the Chechnians to take over.
Here, let me give you the condensed version...........
We didn't take out Saddam, just for WMDs.
When a war is won, the losing side signs a peace accord/treaty. Should that treaty's terms are then broken by the loser, the war is still on. Not only did Saddam break almost every single term of that treaty, but he broke/ignored the SEVENTEEN UN resolutions, it had agreed to. Ergo, the GULF WAR was still on!
Shock and Awe was what WE called the bombing of Baghdad; not searching for WMDs.
His country was not allowed, by Saddam, to be thoroughly searched.
Saddam harbored and helped terrorists. He paid off the families of Palestine suicide bombers, as well.
You're just sore that the Afghan and Taliban forces beat the USSR troops; but American forces beat them all...just admit it.
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