After U.N. Veto, U.S. Closes Embassy in Syria

The United Nations estimates that close to 5,000 Syrians have been killed by pro-government forces since the uprising against Assad’s government began almost a year ago.

The demonstrations in Syria are part of larger uprisings across the Arab world, known collectively as the “Arab Spring.”

The Arab Spring movement has unseated leaders in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya and has seen uprisings in many other countries in the region, including Bahrain, Yemen and Morocco.

China, Russia veto key U.N. resolution

	"The tragedy is for the people of Syria. We the United States stand with the people of Syria. Russia and China are obviously with Assad," said Susan Rice.

The United Nations drafted a resolution condemning the violence in Syria, intended to support a similar move by the Arab League, an organization of nations in the Middle East and North Africa. However, Russia and China, both part of the five-member U.N. Security Council, vetoed the resolution and kept it from passing.

Analysts say Russia and China vetoed the resolution because they were concerned that it might lead the United States and other Western countries to pursue regime change in Syria through military action.

The United States and its allies criticized China and Russia’s vetoes, saying those countries were supporting Assad’s continued brutal violence against his people.

“A couple of members of this council remain steadfast in their willingness to sell out the Syrian people and shield a craven tyrant,” said Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

Truth about crackdown has been hard to find

	Because there are few independent journalists in Syria, news outlets are relying in large part on videos and blog posts of citizen journalists inside the country.

During the Syrian uprising, journalists and government officials have had an especially hard time finding out what is really going on inside the country.

The Arab League recently sent a delegation to Syria to observe how Syrian government forces are handling the uprising. However, the delegates had to leave Syria early because they feared for their safety amid the growing violence.

And, most news organizations have struggled to gain access to Syria to report on what’s going on there. That means it’s been difficult to confirm which reports coming out of the country are true and how many people have died in the violence.

U.S. closes its embassy in Damascus

	The State Department issued a travel warning, recommending that U.S. citizens in Syria "depart immediately, given ongoing violence and a deteriorating security situation."

Following the failure of the U.N. resolution and increased violence in Damascus, the U.S. State Department announced it would close its embassy in Damascus and pull all of its diplomats out of the country for safety reasons.

The move is significant because embassies are representations of how strong relationships are between countries. The United States also does not have an embassy in Iran, Cuba or North Korea, for example.

U.S. officials continue to say they don’t want to intervene militarily in Syria the way they did in Libya; in a recent interview, President Obama said such intervention was unlikely and that Syrians could unseat their leader on their own.

“I think that’s possible,” the president said of resolving the Syria situation without outside military intervention. “My sense is that you’re seeing more and more people inside of Syria recognizing that they need to turn a chapter. . . . This is not going to be a matter of ‘if.’ It’s going to be a matter of ‘when.’ ”