Ambassador Samantha Power: Russia Is Holding UN Security Council 'Hostage' [View all]

[Purveyor]

By JENNIFER EPSTEIN | 9/5/13 1:43 PM EDT

The United States has tried to address the crisis in Syria through the United Nations Security Council over the last few years, but Russia has blocked those efforts to a point that has forced the Obama administration to act, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. said Thursday.

"Russia continues to hold the council hostage and shirk its international responsibilities, including as a party to the Chemical Weapons Convention," Samantha Power told reporters at the UN in New York. Her comments came after the U.S. Mission hosted briefings Thursday for U.N. member states on the U.S. assessments of the Aug. 21 chemical weapons attack that took place on the outskirts of Damascus.

The council, Power said, "is not protecting the stability of the region; it is not standing behind, now, an internationally accepted ban on the use of chemical weapons." Instead, "the system has protected the prerogatives of Russia, the patron of a regime that would brazenly stage the world's largest chemical weapons attack in a quarter-century, while chemical weapons inspectors sent by the United Nations were just across town."

--CLIP

Power said it has always been the United States' preference to see action on Syria come through the U.N., but that after trying to work through the international body for the past two-and-a-half years, Russia's position means the Obama administration has no choice but to take action on its own.

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