"We will continue to reject any attempt by the Assad regime and its allies to use military force, obstruction or disinformation to bypass United Nations efforts to restore peace in Syria", Craft said. "Today and tomorrow, the Trump administration will take decisive steps to prevent the Assad regime from securing a military victory and to spear the regime and its allies back toward Special Envoy Pedersen and the United Nations-led political process".
Craft said the United States’ goal is "to deprive the Assad regime of the revenue and the support it has used to commit large scale atrocities and human right violations that prevent a political resolution and severely diminish the prospects for peace".
The Assad government has a clear choice to pursue political path established in Resolution 2254 or it will leave the United States with no other choice but to continue withholding reconstruction funding and impose sanctions against it and its financial backers, Croft added.
On 20 December, US President Donald Trump signed into law the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act of 2019 that stipulates the president will issue regulations necessary to implement the measure no later than 180 days from the Act being signed into law.
The Caesar Act requires the US administration to impose new sanctions on anyone who does business with or provides financing to the Syrian government, its security services and Syria’s central bank.
In late March, Russia put forward a draft resolution of the UN member states on solidarity in countering the spread of novel coronavirus. The document insisted on assisting the most vulnerable nations, especially developing countries, and ending trade wars and all sanctions adopted without a UN Security Council mandate in order to ensure access to food and medication.
Twenty-eight other countries co-sponsored the draft resolution, while the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom, Ukraine and Georgia blocked it.
