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Nikki Haley, US ambassador to the United Nations (here August 28, 2018). REUTERS / Carlo Allegri
The situation in Idleb where the regime of Bashar al-Assad threatens to launch a vast offensive worries at the highest point in New York. The UN Security Council is scheduled to meet on Friday, September 7, on the issue. Washington, which holds the presidency of the Security Council for the month of September, hopes to prevent a new chemical attack.
With our correspondent in New York, Marie Bourreau
Nikki Haley, the US ambassador to the United Nations also said at a press conference Tuesday: all signals point to a new chemical attack on this last pocket of resistance in Damascus. " There are a lot of rhetoric: Russia is laying charges against opponents, white helmets, all they can. Assad does the same thing. This is exactly the strategy they have always followed before a chemical attack by the Assad regime against its own people. "
But the Security Council has so far shown itself powerless to stop the offensives already carried out in the blood in Aleppo and then in Eastern Ghouta. With this public meeting being held while Russia, Turkey and Iran meet at the same time in Tehran , Washington hopes to put pressure and prevent any new use of chemical weapons. Otherwise Nikki Haley repeated it: the United States will respond to any new attack.
Civilians on the front line
At least nine civilians, including five children, were killed on Tuesday (September 4th) in raids by the Russian army in Idleb province in Syria, where thousands of civilians have sought refuge. This is announced by the Syrian Observatory of Human Rights (OSDH), a London-based NGO. At a press briefing in Geneva, Staffan de Mistura, the UN's special envoy for Syria, asked the Russian and Turkish presidents to urgently find a solution to the crisis.
At his side, Jan Egeland, head of the UN humanitarian working group on Syria recalled that one million children and their parents are trapped in Idleb: " There are currently intense political negotiations and humanitarian. If they succeed, hundreds of thousands of lives will be spared. If they fail, in the coming days or hours, we could witness the most cruel battle of what is already the cruelest war of our generation . "
" Idleb is not comparable to any other region ," says Jan Egeland. Hundreds of thousands of people fled there because they were told they would be safe there. Russia, Turkey and Iran had decreed it was a de-escalation zone. We turn to Russia, Turkey and Iran, we turn to the United States, the Western countries and the Gulf countries which also have influence in the zone, so that they do what they can do so that men with arms and power, for once in this war, will put civilians first . "