Saudia Arabia turns down Security Council seat

On Friday, Saudi Arabia announced that it would be declining the United Nations’ offer of a seat on the Security Council. “The manner, the mechanisms of action and double standards existing in the Security Council prevent it from performing its duties and assuming its responsibilities toward preserving international peace and security as required,” the Saudi Arabia Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

Saudi Arabia has also continuously expressed discontent with the Security Council’s actions in Syria, and says that the council is not able of maintaining international peace. “Allowing the ruling regime in Syria to kill and burn its people by the chemical weapons, while the world stands idly, without applying deterrent sanctions against the Damascus regime, is also irrefutable evidence and proof of the inability of the Security Council to carry out its duties and responsibilities,”  the ministry said. The statement went on to say that the council is not doing enough “to make the Middle East a free zone of all weapons of mass destruction.”

The statement from Saudi Arabia included a thank you to its supporting countries, but noted that it would not consider membership “until the Council is reformed and enabled.”