A hastily scheduled Security Council meeting has been cancelled because the US does not want to make public details of the Syrian ceasefire deal, Russia's ambassador to the United Nations says.
Vitaly Churkin said there was no point in briefing the council if the US did not want to say exactly what was in the documents outlining the deal hammered out last week by US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
"This briefing is not going to happen and mostly likely we're not going to have a resolution of the Security Council because the United States does not want to share those documents with the members of the Security Council and we believe that we cannot ask them to support a document which they haven't seen," Churkin said.
Churkin said on Thursday that Russia hoped the Security Council could pass a resolution endorsing the deal next week during the high-level meeting of the General Assembly.
But he said that the US was unco-operative, constantly trying to modify whatever text of a draft resolution the Russians presented them with.
"Clearly there is lack of unity in the US administration but it was Secretary Kerry who was negotiating on the instructions of President Obama, clearly a deal was made and we expect it to be implemented," Churkin said.
A US official said the session was cancelled because Russian officials were trying to force the US to make the ceasefire deal public.
"The United States will not compromise operational security,'' said the official, who wasn't authorised to be quoted by name and demanded anonymity.
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