All Your Latest News

Russia and China have vetoed a UN Security Council resolution calling for Syrian president Bashar Assad to step down.

The veto comes in the wake of increasing international pressure to stop Assad’s regime, which has implemented a bloody crackdown since last March.

Russia’s veto was expected since it has military connections to the Assad regime, said CBC reporter David Common in New York.

“China comes at it from a different reason,” said Common at the UN on Saturday. “Perhaps it is going in there to try to cushion some of the blow for Russia.”

Common said that without China’s support, Russia would have had to stand alone – especially against allies of the Arab League, the 22-nation organization that had place forth the resolution.

The world body’s failure to pass the resolution comes after U.S. President Barack Obama condemned the latest atrocrities in Syria on Saturday and told its citizens: “we are with you, and the Assad regime must come to an end.”

Opposition groups and activists say more than 200 people were killed by artillery and mortars fired by Syrian forces in the city of Homs overnight.

Supporters of the Free Syrian Army chant slogans during a protest in Reef Damascus, north of Damascus, early Saturday. (Reuters)

In his statement, Obama spoke out against the “relentless brutality” of Assad’s government and again urged the Security Council to stop the killings.

“The international community must work to protect the Syrian people from this abhorrent brutality,” he said.

Activists say the number killed in shelling that started late Friday ranged from 217 to 260, making it the deadliest attack in the central city since the uprising against President Bashar Assad’s regime started 11 months ago.

Some activists said the violence was triggered by a wave of army defections in Homs. There have been reports that army defectors have set up checkpoints in the area.

The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and the Local Co-ordination Committees said more than half of the killings from shelling that started late Friday were reported in the Khaldiyeh neighbourhood.

The opposition Syrian National Council described it as “one of the most horrific massacres since the beginning of the uprising in Syria.”

The reports could not be independently confirmed and the government has accused the opposition groups of engaging in a propaganda campaign.

‘Sad day for Syrians’

Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov had been quoted, just prior to the vote on Saturday, as saying that consensus was still possible. In comments made to local media on Saturday, he urged the West to accommodate Russian concerns to reach a compromise.

Lavrov already warned Washington that any attempt to place a draft resolution on Syria to vote at the United Nations would lead to “scandal,” a blunt warning that Moscow is prepared to use its veto power. He said Moscow had submitted its amendments to the Western-backed draft.

Lavrov said Moscow still sees two problems of “crucial importance” with the draft UN resolution. He said it makes too few demands of armed groups opposing the Assad regime. He also said Moscow remains concerned about whether it prejudges the outcome of a national dialogue among political forces in Syria.

Russia and China, which wield veto power at the Security Council, have blocked previous Western attempts to impose sanctions on the Syrian regime over its crackdown on protests.

“It is a sad day for this council, a sad day for Syrians and a sad day for all friends of democracy,” French Ambassador Gerard Araud said after the resolution was vetoed.

Araud said Russia and China had “made themselves complict in a policy of repression carried out by the Assad regime.”

U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice said her country was “disgusted” by the vote.

“Today the Security Council has failed to live up to its responsibility,” German Ambassador Peter Wittig said. “The people in Syria have been let down again.”

The UN has said that more than 5,400 people have been killed in violence since March. Hundreds more have been killed since that tally was announced, and activists say 200 died in the city of Homs on Saturday.

With files from The Associated Press