UNSC Adopts a Decision to Extend Process of Delivering Aid to Syria

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The UN Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution today, Friday, for six months, to deliver humanitarian aid across the Turkish border to the Syrian Bab Al-Hawa crossing.  

Syria's permanent representative to the United Nations, Bassam Sabbagh, said that delegates, including the Russian and Chinese delegates, made efforts to highlight ways to improve the humanitarian situation and the delivery of aid to Syria.

He added, "Western states insisted on ignoring certain perspectives and focused on efforts to extend the entry of aid to serve their agendas, reaffirming their indifference to the suffering of the Syrian people and the ongoing violation of Syria's sovereignty." 

Sabbagh stressed that Syria "refuses politicized gestures because they violate its sovereignty and territorial integrity, and carry grave flaws that fail to ensure that aid reaches its beneficiaries and not the terrorists." 

He also stressed that Syria continues to meet the humanitarian needs of its citizens and provides support to those in need to mitigate the negative repercussions of the war.

Furthermore, Russia's representative to the United Nations, Vasily Nebenzya, commented on the resolution, saying, "For the first time, Russia and the United States have presented a joint resolution, and Moscow hopes this could be a turning point."

He added that Russia is negotiating with the United States about easing sanctions imposed on Syria.

The joint US, European, and Turkish efforts to extend the aid delivery across the Syrian border, which was scheduled for July 2014, and is subject to UN Security Council Resolution 2165, focuses on the great controversy among the parties towards the conflict in Syria. 

On the other hand, the US and its allies seek to pressure Russia and China to approve the extension of this process. Damascus and its allies fear that Washington and Ankara will misuse the delivery of humanitarian aid to prolong the Syrian crisis, which paves the way for fractured relations between nations of the region. 

At the beginning of the year, Ankara thwarted Syrian-Russian efforts to reopen humanitarian aid crossings between Idlib and the Syrian state authority area, to stop HTS militants from opening the crossings. Also, there were fears concerning Erdogan's intentions regarding Jarablus and Al-Bab in Aleppo, extending to the Jisr al-Shughur, west of Idlib.