‘The cold war is back’: UN head warns Middle East is threat to global peace as Moscow fumes about Trump’s Tweets and claims UK staged gas attack
Meanwhile, international chemical weapons experts were travelling to the war-torn country to investigate an alleged gas attack by government forces on the town of Douma which killed dozens of people
“The cold war is back – with a vengeance,” United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned on Friday as the US and Russia remained at loggerheads over Syria, with Russia now claiming that Britain “staged” a fake chemical attack in the town of Douma this week.
But the situation is worse now than in the 1960s because the safeguards that managed the risk of escalation in the past “no longer seem to be present”, Guterres warned.
The UN chief told an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council that was called on Friday by Russia that the Middle East is in so much “chaos” today that it has become a threat to international peace and security – and Syria “represents the most serious threat”.
His remarks came the same day that Moscow claimed the alleged chemical weapons attack - which has variously been attributed to Russia, Syrian President Bashir al-Assad and Iraq, or all of the above - was actually “staged and directed” by Britain.
The Kremlin also lashed out against US President Donald Trump over his fiery tweets promising “missiles” in exchange for the attack, which observers said claimed the lives of over 40 people, including children.
In his speech to the Security Council, Guterres added that the highly volatile situation risks “escalation, fragmentation and division as far as the eye can see, with profound regional and global ramifications.”