BEIJING - China urged world powers Wednesday to provide humanitarian assistance to Syria, a day after a Syrian diplomat stormed out of an emergency UN meeting on the crisis in his country.
Beijing is trying to bolster diplomacy but opposes any outside intervention in Syria, where an 11-month uprising against authoritarian President Bashar Assad has killed more than 7,500, according to the United Nations.
"The pressing task now is for all parties involved in the conflicts in Syria to immediately stop all violent acts across the board, launch inclusive political dialogues as soon as possible and discuss reform plans," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei recounted Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi as saying in calls this week with the head of the Arab League and the foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia and Algeria. "The international community should create favourable conditions for this and provide humanitarian aid to Syria."
The ministry's account did not say whether China will back a new UN Security Council resolution proposed by Western powers that calls for providing aid to Syria. The ministry statement did not even mention the resolution.
But Beijing has busily tried to prove that its Syria policy amounts to more than just defying the West after it joined Russia in vetoing an earlier UN resolution that outlined plans to end the conflict and condemned President Bashar Assad's crackdown on anti-government forces.
China is concerned that UN resolutions might open an opportunity for the West to intervene and help unseat an authoritarian government as it had in Libya.
On Tuesday, Syria's ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, Fayssal al-Hamwi, accused members of the UN Human Rights Council of promoting terrorism and prolonging the crisis by organizing the debate on it.
Al-Hamwi spoke shortly after the UN's top human rights official called for an immediate cease-fire in Syria and unhindered access for aid agencies to deliver emergency supplies and evacuate the sick and wounded.
The council is expected to pass a resolution this week condemning human rights violations by Syrian authorities. Unlike Security Council actions, the council's resolution has no legal weight.
