Kerry demanded that planes immediately avoid areas where humanitarian aid would be delivered as a way "to restore credibility to the process."
"How can people go sit at a table with a regime that bombs hospitals and drops chlorine gas again and again and again and again and again and again and acts with impunity?" Kerry told the Security Council meeting, setting aside his prepared remarks. "Are we supposed to sit there and have happy talk in Geneva when you've signed up to a cease-fire and you don't adhere to it? What kind of credibility do you have?"
Kerry's remarks highlight a growing U.S. frustration with Russian leaders who have insisted they want the cease-fire to work yet haven't ensured Assad's compliance with it. But Russia is similarly distrustful of the U.S., saying it's protecting Islamic extremist groups allied with moderate opposition forces in the country. Suspicions between the two sides only grew after U.S.-led coalition jets killed more than 60 Syrian soldiers in a strike over the weekend that the Pentagon called an accident and after the U.S. said Russia was ultimately to blame for an attack Monday on an aid convoy that killed 20 civilians.
Russia has denied U.S. claims that it was responsible, but Kerry focused on its shifting explanation of what might have happened.
First, Kerry said, Russian President Vladimir Putin's spokesman described the attack as a "necessary response" to an alleged offensive by al-Qaida-linked militants elsewhere in the country. Then a Russian ambassador said forces were targeting another area.
Russia's Defense Ministry followed by saying the aid convoy was accompanied by militants in a pickup with a mortar, Kerry said, adding that no such evidence exists. Then the ministry denied any Russian or Syrian involvement as its spokesman suggested, in Kerry's words, that "the food and the medicine just spontaneously combusted."
"This is not a joke," Kerry exclaimed, urging all to stop the "word games that duck responsibility or avoid the choices ... with respect to war and peace, life and death." His pleas crossed paths with another statement by Russia's government, this time suggesting a U.S. coalition Predator drone was operating nearby when the convoy attack occurred. The Pentagon said no drone was in the area at the time.
Kerry called for all warplanes to halt flights over aid routes, and Russia's chief diplomat spoke of a possible three-day pause in fighting.
"Supposedly we all want the same goal. I've heard that again and again," Kerry told the council. "Everybody sits there and says we want a united Syria, secular, respecting the rights of all people, in which the people of Syria can choose their leadership. But we are proving woefully inadequate in our ability to be able to get to the table and have that conversation and make it happen."
Source: ArkansasOnline
Source: ArkansasOnline