Russia UN veto on Syria aimed at crushing West's crusade - Reuters Africa

By Louis Charbonneau

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Russia's veto of a Security Council resolution on Syria goes far beyond mere protection for a close ally and arms buyer - it showed Moscow's determination to crush what it sees as a Western crusade to use the United Nations to topple unfriendly regimes.

The same holds true for China, which followed Russia's lead and joined Moscow in its second double veto to strike down a European-Arab draft resolution that would have endorsed an Arab League plan for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to transfer power to his deputy to prepare free elections.

Russia's move, analysts and diplomats say, was a diplomatic counteroffensive responding to an unusually active period for the Security Council. Last year the 15-nation panel twice adopted resolutions authorizing "all necessary measures" - diplomatic code for military force - in Libya and Ivory Coast.

Libya and Ivory Coast were also the first time the council invoked the Western-backed notion of the "responsibility to protect" civilians threatened by their own governments.

In both cases U.N.-authorized military intervention led to the ouster of the countries' leaders. Libya's Muammar Gaddafi was killed at the hands of rebels who overthrew him during a six-month civil war and Ivory Coast's Laurent Gbagbo is now in a holding cell at the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

Russia and China did not stand in the way of U.N. action in Ivory Coast or Libya, whose civil war was initially the bloodiest of last year's Arab Spring uprisings.

But while Western governments and human rights groups welcomed enforcement of the concept of the "responsibility to protect" civilians, Moscow and Beijing did not hide their disdain for an idea they equate with violating states' sovereignty, which the United Nations was founded to protect.

In the case of Libya, Moscow was infuriated by the decision of France and others to supply weapons to rebels in violation of a U.N. arms embargo, while NATO appeared to be providing crucial air support for rebel offensives against Gaddafi's forces.   Continued...