Sabbagh: Syria suffers from exploitation of UN system by western countries, encounters fiercest terrorist organizations

New York, SANA-Syria’s permanent representative to the UN, Bassam Sabbagh, said on Monday that Syria has suffered over the past ten years from the exploitation of the UN’s system by some Western countries to serve their hostile policies against Syria, pointing out that importance of reviewing the organization’s working mechanisms and prevent their exploitation by those countries in the service of their destructive policies and agendas.

Sabbagh’s remarks came during a UN Security Council’s session on “Purpose and Principles of the UN Charter in the Maintenance of International Peace and Security and effective pluralism through defending the principles of the United Nations Charter”.

Ambassador Sabbagh added that Syria has fallen, during the past decade, a victim of the loss of true pluralism and the exploitation of the UN system, by some countries, as a platform to serve their hostile and interventional policies in its affairs.

Sabbagh pointed out that Syria’s national wealth and resources are being plundered at the hands of foreign forces that are illegitimately presented in its territories, while the humanitarian suffering of its people is exacerbating due to unilateral, illegitimate, inhumane and immoral coercive measures imposed on them, which are negatively affected all aspects of their life and left a large number of displaced people and refugees in a flagrant violation of the principles and purposes of the UN Charter.

“Today, more than ever, there is an urgent need to review the working methods within the UN system and ensure the promotion of true pluralism based on the Charter, through respecting the purposes and principles of the Charter and achieve the objectives sought by the United Nations system’s founding fathers, and increase the effectiveness and efficiency of their work in a way that leads to raising their credibility at the international level”, Sabbagh added .

Sabbagh stressed that preserving true pluralism requires reforming current structures, on the top of which is expanding the Security Council to reflect the new reality of international relations, as well as reforming international financial institutions, such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, so that they respond to the interests of developing countries and countries of the South, as well as, effectively encountering the attempts to manipulate or misinterpret the Charter’s provisions to justify the interference in the internal affairs of member states.

“The essential elements to advance the work of the United Nations are represented in embodying the meanings of true pluralism through promoting the values of peace, and settling the disputes by peaceful means, equality in sovereignty between all member states and the economic development and cooperation between them,” he went on to say.

Sabbagh concluded his speech by noting that the UN multilateral system faced many challenges over the past two decades in dealing with a series of political, economic and social crises, which was manifested in the abject failure to prevent the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, and the inability to put an end to the tragedy of the Palestinian people who are suffering due to the Israeli occupation for their lands for decades, and in the encounter of increasing terrorist threats, the spread of pandemics and diseases, and the exacerbation of human suffering due to poverty, hunger, thirst and lack of medical care.

Hala Zain