London: Britain’s Foreign Secretary William Hague has reportedly issued an ultimatum to Russia to intervene in the Syrian crisis before ‘it was too late’.
He also warned that the massacre of over 100 people, including 32 young children in Houla, had taken Syria to the brink of civil war.
Hague said that Russia now faced a stark choice between using its leverage with the Syrian President Bashar-al Assad regime or risking it`s last bastion of influence in the Middle East descending into chaos.
He also urged Moscow to put its full weight behind the six-point United Nations plan for Syria brokered by the former secretary general Kofi Annan.
“We`ve had many differences of view over Russia at the Security Council, but Russia does support the Annan plan and so I hope Russia will redouble its efforts to get the Assad regime to implement that plan,” The Telegraph quoted Hague, as saying.
“It`s not in the interests of Russia, just as it`s not in the interests of anybody in the world for Syria to descend in to an even bloodier situation and in to full scale civil war and that is now the danger,” he added.
Russia’s deputy ambassador to the UN Igor Pankin cast doubts on the culpability of Syria’s government for the massacre of over 100 people in Houla.
“We need to establish whether it was the Syrian authorities,” Pankin had said at the UN.
Meanwhile, Hague, who said he was ‘sickened’ by the images from the massacre at Houla, also called an emergency session of the UN Security Council and summoned Syria`s most senior diplomat to the Foreign Office for an official dressing down.
ANI
