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Summary China defended its rejection of a U.N. resolution pressing Syrian Bashar al-Assad to abandon power.
Top state newspaper said Western intervention in Libya, Afghanistan and Iraq exposed the risks of forced regime change.China said its blocking, along with Russia, of the U.N. resolution which would have backed an Arab plan urging Assad to quit, did not amount to supporting the Syrian leader. Activists accused his forces of bombarding part of the city of Homs before the U.N. vote in the worst bloodshed of the 11-month uprising.On the issue of Syria, China is not playing favourites and nor is it deliberately opposing anyone, but rather is upholding an objective and fair stance and a responsible position,Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Weimin told reporters in Beijing.Western powers that initiated the U.N. Security Council vote on their draft resolution were culpable for not going far enough in seeking compromise, said Liu.Our goal is for the Syrian people to escape violence, conflict and flames of war, and not to make the problem even more complicated, he said.Unfortunately, the countries that proposed the resolution forced a vote despite the serious differences among various sides, and this approach was not conducive to the unity and authority of Security Council and is not conducive to the appropriate resolution of the problem. Therefore, China voted against the draft resolution, Liu added.Chinas explanation is unlikely to mollify critics in Western capitals and the Middle East.The conflicting Chinese and Western positions have exposed a wider rift about how China should use its growing influence and whether it should foresake its long-standing principle of non-interference in other countries domestic conflicts.Chinas siding with Russia over Syria could add to irritants with the United States. Vice President Xi Jinping, the Communist Partys likely next leader, is due to visit there next week.Whatever the (Syria) resolution may have said on paper, both China and Russia worried that it could have laid the way for legitimising another armed intervention, said Guo Xiangang, a senior research fellow at the China Institute of International Studies, a government-run think tank in Beijing.—Agencies
