Charlie Rose Talks to Vitaly Churkin

You’ve come from the UN. You’ve no doubt been discussing Syria. Where are we? What’s going on?
We’re not in a good place. We do have the basis to work productively on the situation in Syria, but we don’t use it properly. I’m referring to Kofi Annan’s effort as a joint special envoy of the Secretary General of the United Nations and Arab League … which adopted a very good document. The main goal set in that document is to set up the so-called National Transitional Body in Syria composed of members of the government and the opposition in order to start steering the country away from crisis to a future which would be satisfactory to all Syrians. But frankly, we don’t see much of an effort to implement that goal. What we see is a continued strategy of all-out pressure on the regime of Assad … political, economic, and military pressure in the expectation that, you know, it will break down, and then the entire political structure in Syria will change. This, incidentally, is the fundamental difference we have with the U.S. and others, and it caused our three vetoes. We believe that what the international community needs to do is to put various parties together and work it out in the course of a dialogue, that this is the only way to actually achieve a firm result where neither of the parties will feel the loser. Unfortunately, the U.S. and some others from the outset of the crisis decided that they must topple Assad’s regime at any cost. But for that they needed legitimacy, which can only come from the Security Council.

Hasn’t President Assad brought this on himself by killing his own people?
Definitely. He made two very grave mistakes, and we’ve been saying that openly all along. First of all, he did not immediately introduce dramatic political reforms to indicate that he is not only promising a better future for his country but is actually doing it. And then, yes, there was some excessive use of force. It was not unprovoked, because from the outset of the crisis we believe there were destructive, extreme elements which were provoking the government. But then some excesses clearly did take place.