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WASHINGTON, Oct 6: A US congressional campaign against Syria joining the United Nations Security Council gathered momentum on Friday when 33 members urged the Bush administration to oppose Syrian membership vigorously.
A senior State Department official said it would be difficult for the United States to stop Syria because it has the backing of the 50-nation Asia grouping at the United Nations for an Arab-designated seat and no cracks have appeared in the regional consensus.
The U.N. General Assembly is expected to vote for Syria as one of the 10 nonpermanent members of the council on Monday. In the absence of a rival candidate from the Middle East, there is little Washington can do to defeat it, diplomats said.
But the 33 members of the House of Representatives, led by New York Democrat Eliot Engel, said in a letter to President George W. Bush: “We urge the United States to oppose vigorously Syria’s bid for a Security Council seat and encourage our coalition allies to do the same until it ceases its support for terrorism (and) no longer provides safe-haven for terrorists.”
The letter also complained of the Syrian military presence in Lebanon and accused Damascus of having “rebuffed Israel’s very generous peace offers.”
At the United Nations, Israel’s U.N. Ambassador Yehuda Lancry also opposed Syrian membership.
In a letter to Secretary-General Kofi Annan he said that Syria’s policies “stand in blatant contraction to the principles of the U.N. Charter” by its direct support for the “terrorist” Hizbollah guerrillas in Lebanon.
A Syrian victory will be especially unwelcome in Washington at a time when the Bush administration is trying to lead an international campaign against the group that carried out the attacks on New York and Washington on Sept. 11.
Syria is one of seven countries on the State Department’s list of “state sponsors of terrorism”, because of its support for Lebanese and Palestinian guerrilla groups.
By its membership on the council, which would start in January, Syria would automatically belong to a high-level committee, chaired by Britain, that is to implement a new counter-terrorism resolution.
THWARTED SUDAN: State Department spokesman Richard Boucher, asked what the United States would do at the United Nations, declined to say if it planned to lobby against Syria’s candidacy.
“We evaluate candidates by whether or not they have the support of the regional group... Generally, candidates that are uncontested within that regional group get voted in,” he said.
“So we will look at this situation and we will do what we think is appropriate, but we don’t disclose either in advance or afterwards how we have voted,” he added.
A senior State Department official said it was not the same as in 2000, when the United States succeeded in thwarting a Sudanese bid for a seat on the Security Council.
The United States favored Mauritius over Sudan because Sudan was under U.N. sanctions at the time and was suspected of bombing U.N. relief operations in the south of the country.
“There was enough of a crack in the (Africa) group... There was not a consensus and there was in fact still a lot of difference,” added the official, who asked not to be named.
The Security Council has 15 members, five with permanent seats and 10 with nonpermanent seats. The 10 nonpermanent members serve two-year terms, with five changing each year.
Also running unopposed on Monday are Cameroon and Guinea, representing two African slots. —Reuters
