France announces UNSC meeting on Syria

France, which currently holds the presidency of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), on Wednesday announced a ministerial meeting of the UNSC on August 30 to discuss the worsening Syrian crisis. The French Foreign Ministry said that FM Laurent Fabius, would preside the meeting that the authorities here have been seeking to organise since August 1, when France took over the UNSC presidency for a month. France has several times said it would be calling “an urgent” session of the Security Council to address the Syrian issue but has only managed to get a meeting on the last day of its presidency. “By bringing together our Security Council partners, France intends to show its support for the Syrian people, its growing concern for regional stability and its attachment to a transition to a democratic and pluralist system” in Syria, a statement said. Paris noted an intensification of clashes and a rise each day in the number of refugees fleeing the conflict. The Foreign Ministry said that the August 30 meeting would be essentially devoted to examining the humanitarian situation in Syria’s neighbours, where hundreds of thousands have fled. Fabius is going to the region August 15-17 and will visit Jordan, Turkey and Lebanon, including refugee camps in those countries. The UNSC is badly divided over Syria, and Russia and China have three times vetoed resolutions aimed at increasing pressure through sanctions on Damascus. “Despite the divisions which have prevailed these past months, the Security Council cannot remain silent faced with the drama taking place in Syria,” the French statement affirmed.