{"id":42219,"date":"2020-01-10T11:22:27","date_gmt":"2020-01-10T11:22:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=42219"},"modified":"2020-01-10T11:22:27","modified_gmt":"2020-01-10T11:22:27","slug":"iran-invites-boeing-to-probe-plane-crash-that-killed-176","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=42219","title":{"rendered":"Iran invites Boeing to probe plane crash that killed 176"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\nUNITED NATIONS: Facing a Friday deadline that could halt the delivery of humanitarian aid to more than 1 million Syrians every month, the divided UN Security Council is set to vote on rival resolutions that would continue deliveries through border crossings to mainly rebel-held areas.
A draft resolution co-sponsored by Germany, Belgium and Kuwait and supported by the UN humanitarian office would continue the delivery of aid through two crossing points in Turkey and one in Iraq.
A rival resolution from Russia, Syria\u2019s closest ally on the council, would extend deliveries only through the two Turkish crossings.
The current year-long mandate expires on Friday, and if it is not extended, the delivery of food, medicine and other essential items will stop. The Security Council is scheduled to vote on the rival resolutions Friday afternoon. Both drafts would extend the mandate for six months,
Diplomats said the five veto-wielding council members \u2014 the United States, Russia, China, United Kingdom and France \u2014 met four times since last week and were unable to reach a compromise on a draft resolution.
Since 2014, the Security Council has authorized the delivery of aid through four border crossings \u2014 Bab Al-Salam and Bab Al-Hawa in Turkey, Al Yarubiyah in Iraq, and Al-Ramtha in Jordan.
UN humanitarian chief Mark Lowcock told the Security Council in November that 4 million people across northern Syria are supported by UN cross-border humanitarian assistance.
He said the UN provided 1.1 million people with food through cross-border deliveries in October, double the number in January. Since 2014, he said, the United Nations has sent nearly 30,000 trucks of humanitarian assistance across the four border-crossings.
\u201cThere is no alternative to the cross-border operation,\u201d Lowcock said. \u201cThere is no Plan B.\u201d
\u201cWithout the cross-border operation, we would see an immediate end of aid supporting millions of civilians,\u201c\u201d he warned. \u201cThat would cause a rapid increase in hunger and disease. A lot more people would flood across the borders, making an existing crisis even worse in the region.\u201d
The cross-border issue initially came to a head on Dec. 30 when Russia and China vetoed a resolution that would authorize deliveries through three crossings, which was supported by 13 of the 15 Security Council members.
A rival resolution sponsored by Russia and China would have only two crossing points in Turkey. It was defeated because it failed to get the required nine \u201cyes\u201d votes for adoption.
At the time, Russia\u2019s UN Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia said cross-border aid was meant to be a temporary response to the eight-year Syrian conflict and the situation on the ground has changed.
He said the Jordan crossing point hasn\u2019t been used \u201cfor a lengthy period of time\u201d and the volume through the Iraqi crossing \u201cis insignificant … and could be done from Syria.\u201d The Russian draft allows aid through the two Turkish crossings \u201cwhere it remains necessary,\u201d Nebenzia said.
Russia joined the war in 2015, when the Syrian military appeared close to collapse. Since then, and largely because of Russia\u2019s blanket air support, the Syrian government has largely won the civil war militarily, and has retaken control of most of the country from rebel fighters.
But Germany, Belgium and Kuwait, backed by the US, Britain, France and other council nations, insist the Iraqi crossing point is also critical, especially for the delivery of medicine.
Their draft resolution, to be voted on Friday, is more streamlined than the defeated measure and addresses some concerns of Russia, including calling on UN humanitarian agencies \u201cto improve monitoring of the delivery and distribution of United Nations relief consignments and their delivery inside Syria.\u201d
It also asks Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to conduct an independent review of UN humanitarian operations across borders and conflict lines within six months, including on whether the Jordanian crossing should be re-authorized.
Secretary-General Guterres echoed Lowcock in a report to the council in late December saying \u201cthe United Nations does not have an alternative means of reaching people in need in the areas in which cross-border assistance is being provided.\u201d
UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said then that the humanitarian situation in northwest and northeast Syria is \u201chorrific,\u201d stressing that \u201cit would be markedly worse without the cross-border operation.\u201d
David Miliband, head of the International Rescue Committee which supplies aid to 1 million Syrians across the country, said in a letter to Security Council members Wednesday that with humanitarian needs intensifying in the last rebel-held stronghold in northwest Idlib and in the northeast, and with tensions escalating in the Middle East \u201cthe last thing the region needs is for the delivery of humanitarian aid to be compromised.\u201d
\u201cHumanitarian aid in Syria is not just a lifeline to millions in need, it shores up stability,\u201d he stressed.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

UNITED NATIONS: Facing a Friday deadline that could halt the delivery of humanitarian aid to more than 1 million Syrians every month, the divided UN Security Council is set to vote on rival resolutions that would continue deliveries through border crossings to mainly rebel-held areas.A draft resolution co-sponsored by Germany, Belgium and Kuwait and supported…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":42220,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=42219"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42219\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/42220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=42219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=42219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=42219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}