Security Council Fails to Agree on Joint Syria Declaration

FILE PHOTO: Members of the United Nations Security Council gather during a meeting about the situation in Venezuela, in New York, US, February 26, 2019. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton
FILE PHOTO: Members of the United Nations Security Council gather during a meeting about the situation in Venezuela, in New York, US, February 26, 2019. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton
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Security Council Fails to Agree on Joint Syria Declaration

FILE PHOTO: Members of the United Nations Security Council gather during a meeting about the situation in Venezuela, in New York, US, February 26, 2019. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton
FILE PHOTO: Members of the United Nations Security Council gather during a meeting about the situation in Venezuela, in New York, US, February 26, 2019. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton

The UN Security Council on Tuesday failed to agree on a joint declaration on Syria, capping a day of negotiations in which UN special envoy for Syria Geir Pedersen called to jump-start the deadlocked peace process.

Russia repeatedly blocked negotiations on the matter, diplomats said, although Moscow did not respond to a request for comment as to why.

Endless rounds of UN-backed peace talks on Syria have failed to stem the bloodshed and in recent years have been largely overtaken by parallel negotiations led by Russia and Turkey.

"The current divisions in the international community need to be bridged," Pedersen told journalists earlier in the day following a Security Council videoconference.

Pedersen said that without "constructive international diplomacy" on Syria, it was unlikely that "any track -- constitutional track or any other -- will really move forward."

Diplomats said the failure to agree a declaration was due to Russia, which had made demands unacceptable to Western nations.

"The Russians are asking too much," a diplomat said on condition of anonymity.

The council's monthly meeting on Syria is usually public, but officials kept the session private after a meeting of the Syrian Constitutional Committee in Geneva last month ended with no progress.

Estonia's UN envoy Sven Jurgenson lamented the lack of progress.

"The aim was not to create a debating club, but to give Syrian people a way out from a 10-year long conflict," he said, according to a copy of his speech that was released after the meeting.

"It is clear to everyone that the Syrian government has just taken advantage of these meetings to delay any real reconciliation."

The committee was created in 2019 to modify Syria's 2012 constitution, which directs the organization of elections under UN supervision.

"Session five of the Constitutional Committee was a missed opportunity and disappointment," Pedersen said of the January meeting, which included the Syrian regime, the opposition and civil society.

"There is a lack of trust and confidence and a lack of will to compromise -- and a lack of political space to compromise too," he added.

Diplomats told AFP that Western powers were unanimous during Tuesday's meeting in decrying the "failure" of the political process.

One representative accused the constitutional committee of having achieved nothing, and blamed the Syrian regime for "delay tactics."



Gaza Doctors Cram Babies into Incubators as Fuel Shortage Threatens Hospitals

Smoke rises in Gaza after an explosion, as seen from the Israeli side of the Israel-Gaza border, July 7, 2025. REUTERS/Amir Cohen
Smoke rises in Gaza after an explosion, as seen from the Israeli side of the Israel-Gaza border, July 7, 2025. REUTERS/Amir Cohen
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Gaza Doctors Cram Babies into Incubators as Fuel Shortage Threatens Hospitals

Smoke rises in Gaza after an explosion, as seen from the Israeli side of the Israel-Gaza border, July 7, 2025. REUTERS/Amir Cohen
Smoke rises in Gaza after an explosion, as seen from the Israeli side of the Israel-Gaza border, July 7, 2025. REUTERS/Amir Cohen

At Gaza's largest hospital, doctors say crippling fuel shortages have led them to put several premature babies in a single incubator as they struggle to keep the newborns alive while Israel presses on with its military campaign.

Overwhelmed medics say the dwindling fuel supplies threaten to plunge them into darkness and paralyze hospitals and clinics in the Palestinian territory, where health services have been pummeled during 21 months of war.

While Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu discussed the fate of Israeli hostages in Gaza with US President Donald Trump in Washington this week, patients at Al Shifa medical center in Gaza City faced imminent danger, doctors there said.

"We are forced to place four, five, or sometimes three premature babies in one incubator," said Dr. Mohammed Abu Selmia, Al Shifa's director.

"Premature babies are now in a very critical condition."

The threat comes from "neither an airstrike nor a missile — but a siege choking the entry of fuel," Dr. Muneer Alboursh, director general of the Gaza Ministry of Health, told Reuters.

The shortage is "depriving these vulnerable people of their basic right to medical care, turning the hospital into a silent graveyard," he said.

Gaza, a tiny strip of land with a population of more than 2 million, was under a long, Israeli-led blockade before the war between Israel and Palestinian group Hamas erupted.

Palestinians and medical workers have accused the Israeli military of attacking hospitals, allegations it rejects.

Israel accuses Hamas of operating from medical facilities and running command centers underneath them, which Hamas denies.

Patients in need of medical care, food and water are paying the price.

There have been more than 600 attacks on health facilities since the conflict began, the WHO says, without attributing blame. It has described the health sector in Gaza as being "on its knees", with shortages of fuel, medical supplies and frequent arrivals of mass casualties.

Just half of Gaza's 36 general hospitals are partially functioning, according to the UN agency.

Abu Selmia warned of a humanitarian catastrophe and accused Israel of "trickle-feeding" fuel to Gaza's hospitals.

COGAT, the Israeli military aid coordination agency, did not immediately respond to a request for comment about fuel shortages at Gaza's medical facilities and the risk to patients.

OXYGEN RISK

Abu Selmia said Al Shifa's dialysis department had been shut down to protect the intensive care unit and operating rooms, which can't be without electricity for even a few minutes.

There are around 100 premature babies in Gaza City hospitals whose lives are at serious risk, he said. Before the war, there were 110 incubators in northern Gaza compared to about 40 now, said Abu Selmia.

"Oxygen stations will stop working. A hospital without oxygen is no longer a hospital. The lab and blood banks will shut down, and the blood units in the refrigerators will spoil," Abu Selmia said, adding that the hospital could become "a graveyard for those inside".

Officials at Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis are also wondering how they will cope with the fuel crisis. The hospital needs 4,500 liters of fuel per day and it now has only 3,000 liters, said hospital spokesperson Mohammed Sakr.

Doctors are performing surgeries without electricity or air conditioning. The sweat from staff is dripping into patients' wounds, he said.

Earlier this year, Israel imposed a total blockade on Gaza for nearly three months, before partly lifting it. Israel accuses Hamas of diverting aid, something Hamas denies.

"You can have the best hospital staff on the planet, but if they are denied the medicines and the pain killers and now the very means for a hospital to have light ... it becomes an impossibility," said James Elder, a spokesperson for UN children's agency UNICEF, recently returned from Gaza.

The latest bloodshed in the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict was triggered in October 2023, when Hamas attacked southern Israel, killing around 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.

Gaza's health ministry says Israel's response has killed over 57,000 Palestinians. It has also caused a hunger crisis, internally displaced almost all Gaza's population and prompted accusations of genocide and war crimes, which Israel denies.