Haley rejects closed-door Security Council meeting on Syria
United States Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley on Friday categorically rejected Bolivia’s request for a closed-door meeting of the Security Council to discuss a U.S. missile strike on Syria.
“The United States, as president of the Council this month, decided the session would be held in the open,” Haley said in a statement. “Any country that chooses to defend the atrocities of the Syrian regime will have to do so in full public view, for all the world to hear.”
Bolivia made the request early Friday morning after a U.S. destroyer in the Mediterranean launched dozens of cruise missiles at a Syrian military airfield in response to a chemical attack in Northern Syria allegedly carried out by President Bashar Assad’s forces. The chemical attack left scores of civilians dead, including numerous children.
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Many world leaders rallied around the U.S. strike, but Assad ally Russia called it an act of “aggression against a sovereign state.” Assad himself condemned the attack as reckless and “short-sighted.”
Bolivia’s U.N. representative blasted the U.S. at the Friday meeting, asserting that the country had acted unilaterally in its attack and violated the U.N. charter.
“The United States was preparing once again and carried out a unilateral attack,” he said. “The missile attack of course is a unilateral action. They represent a serious threat to international peace and security.”
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