US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov will hold bilateral talks as ministers from the 15 council nations attend an open Security Council meeting to look ahead after last year’s Arab uprisings.
On the sidelines, the Quartet of Mideast peace mediators — the UN, US, European Union and Russia — will hold a private session on the escalating Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which is witnessing the worst flare-up in violence in more than a year.
The ministerial meeting, hosted by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, is expected to review efforts to get the Palestinians and Israelis back to the negotiating table, but deep divisions remain and there is little hope of a breakthrough.
Libya’s foreign minister will be in New York to brief the council, and Tunisia’s foreign minister will speak by videoconference. British Foreign Secretary William Hague will chair the meeting, and speakers will include Clinton, Lavrov and French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe.
Much attention is likely to be focused on the private meeting between Clinton and Lavrov, which is expected to be dominated by serious differences over how to address the violence in Syria, which the United Nations estimates has killed over 7,500 people.
Russia, which is Syria’s most powerful ally, and China have vetoed two Security Council resolutions which would have condemned President Bashar Assad’s bloody crackdown, saying they were unbalanced and demanded that only the government stop attacks, not the opposition. Moscow accused Western powers of fueling the conflict by backing the rebels.
Earlier this month, the United States proposed a new draft which tried to take a more balanced approach, but diplomats said Russia and China rejected it, saying it was still unbalanced.
Lavrov was flying to New York from Cairo, where he had a tense meeting with Arab League foreign ministers. They have endorsed a plan for Assad to hand power to his vice president, but the Russians are adamantly opposed to any resolution endorsing regime change.
In the end, the Arab League and Lavrov agreed on several points that could serve as the basis for a future Security Council resolution: an immediate cease-fire, a clause preventing foreign intervention, assurances about humanitarian aid and an endorsement of the mission of special envoy to Syria, former UN chief Kofi Annan.
Annan left Syria on Sunday without a deal to end the conflict, while regime forces mounted a new assault on rebel strongholds in the north.
Western powers have said they will not intervene militarily in Syria as they did last year against Muammar Qaddafi in Libya. Top officials in Saudi Arabia and Qatar have spoken positively of the idea of arming the rebels in Syria, but they have not announced concrete plans.
At the start of Monday’s Security Council meeting, the ministers are expected to approve a resolution extending the UN political mission in Libya for a year, with a mandate to support the government’s democratic transition, help with elections, promote the rule of law and the protection of human rights, assist in demobilizing ex-combatants and eliminate the flood of weapons.
