Syria hopes that a letter sent by eight United Nations ambassadors to Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Thursday will help bring a stop to US unilateral sanctions imposed on the country, Syria's Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad told Sputnik
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 30th March, 2020) Syria hopes that a letter sent by eight United Nations ambassadors to Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Thursday will help bring a stop to US unilateral sanctions imposed on the country, Syria's Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad told Sputnik.
The letter was signed by the permanent representatives of Russia, China, Syria, Cuba, North Korea, Iran, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, and called for the lifting of US sanctions at a time when the international community was struggling to contain the global COVID-19 pandemic.
"We believe that the letter sent by these countries to the secretary-general of the United Nations, to the Security Council ... has shown the very correct approach to finding solutions to the present difficult dangerous situation of the international community in all countries of the world, which means that these inhuman sanctions should stop immediately," Mekdad stated.
At this time, as the world faces a joint epidemiological and economic crisis due to the coronavirus outbreak, sanctions were harming efforts to combat a global pandemic, the deputy foreign minister stated.
"Unilateral coercive measures play a very negative role in finding the necessary solutions," Mekdad remarked.
In the place of punitive measures, the deputy foreign minister called for global cooperation to curb the spread of COVID-19.
"This situation we are all facing, necessitates cooperation among countries of the world, not sanctions that affect the lives of poor people in particular and help the disease to spread everywhere," the deputy foreign minister said.
On Thursday, the Russian mission to the United Nations said in a statement that the UN Security Council will convene on Monday to discuss the ongoing situation in Syria.
Washington began extending wide-ranging sanctions on the Syrian government in 2011, at the start of the country's still ongoing conflict, with a particular focus on the petrochemical industry. Additional sanctions have been applied throughout the conflict, affecting many areas of the Syrian economy.
