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[ClarissaMach]

Could you teachers please correct this text? I didn't write it, I have just translated from a Brazilian newspaper's editorial as an exercise. I don't necessarily agree with the author's ideas.



Russian and Chinese cynicism in the Syrian crisis

The Syrian dictator Bashar Assad is still taking advantage of the Russian and Chinese negative to the intervention of the UN Security Council for destroying the city of Homs with heavy bombing, attacking men, women and children under the excuse of repressing those that fight against his regime. The Assad family has been in power for 31 years.

Russia and China acted moved by a lamentable cynicism by saying no to an already dehydrated version of a plan by the Arab League, supported by the Security Council, with the objective of detaining the butchery. Russian president, Vladimir Putin, says he thinks inacceptable the interference within internal themes of another country and offers the guarantees obtained by his diplomat in Damascus that Assad is going to stop the bloodbath. One may wonder: what is more important, a diplomatic fundamental or the lives of thousands of people? And there is only one thing today more devaluated in the market than the bounds from Greece: Assad�s promises.

Russia and China seem to be moved by old ideas of the Cold War that fortunately are already buried. Behind Putin�s diplomatic fundamentals is the desire of maintaining signs of the power of the Soviet Union in old spheres of influence, such as the Middle East. Russia inherited from the Soviet Union the only naval base in �warm seas�, in the Mediterranean Sea, in the city of Tartus, along Syria�s coast. There are more cynical reasons: the current Syrian regime is a great buyer of Russian weapons, a client Moscow doesn�t want to lose. Putin, current Russian premier, is on campaign to come back to presidency, and speaking out harshly with the Western World might result in more votes in Russia, at the cost of the lives of thousands of Syrians that he pretends to defend.

The diplomacy moves. The USA, paralyzed by the Chinese-Russian no in the Security Council, propose the creation of the group of Friends of Syria in order to retake the initiative. The European Union studies new sanctions for Assad�s regime. The Arab League announces that will resend their mission to Syrian, and the Secretary-General of UN, Ban Ki-moon, agrees to support it. Turkey says she can not just keep observing the butchery and sends her diplomat, Ahmet Davutoglu, for discussing with the White House the best way of acting. Even China decided to send a diplomat to get in contact with the Syrian opposition.
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