Saudi Arabia rejects UN security Council Seat barely 24hours after election
Saudi Arabia, an advocate of foreign military intervention against Syria’s government, has rejected its rotating seat on the UN Security Council, saying the body cannot deal with international conflicts.
The Gulf kingdom for the first time won on Thursday a place among non-permanent members of the top international security body, along with Chad, Chile, Lithuania and Nigeria.
But a day after an election at the UN General Assembly awarded the position, Saudi Arabia rejected the honor.
“The kingdom sees that the method and work mechanism and the double standards in the Security Council prevent it from properly shouldering its responsibilities towards world peace,” Saudi foreign ministry explained the move in a statement.
Riyadh mentioned the Syrian conflict and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict as examples of the UNSC’s failures to ensure world peace. It also cited its inability to transform the Middle East into a zone free of weapons of mass destruction, an apparent reference to Israel’s alleged stockpile of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.
The diplomatic demarche comes weeks after the Security Council passed a resolution which supports a Russia-brokered deal under which Syria revealed its chemical weapons stockpiles and agreed to destroy them.
The disarmament put on hold US plans to use force against Damascus in response to the use of chemical weapons near the capital in August.
A group of international inspectors is currently working in Syria, destroying its chemical weapons capabilities. It has so far verified half of Damascus’ information on its 
stockpile. The process of destruction of the arsenal is already underway.
Saudi Arabia, which allegedly sponsors rebel forces trying to topple Syrian President Bashar Assad, has criticized the development. Earlier it rejected its right to address the UN General Assembly in a protest against inaction in Syria.
The UN Security Council is authorized to allow use of force on behalf of the international community for the sake of global security and preservation of peace. There are five permanent members of the council – the US, the UK, China, Russia and France, which hold veto power on the council decisions.
Ten non-permanent members, which cannot block UNSC draft resolutions, are elected to serve two-year terms.
Critics of the body, which was formed after World War II, has long accused it of inability to act in situations where interests of permanent members are in conflict with each other. In the Syrian crisis the US, Britain and France all advocated supporting the rebels, while Russia and China opposed them.