The United States will not request the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to support a no-fly zone over Syria, the outgoing U.S. ambassador to NATO said Monday, according to Reuters.
He added that the Syria no-fly zone issue was at the moment not on the alliance’s agenda.
“We are not pushing for a no-fly zone at NATO,” Ivo Daalder said in Brussels. “The issue of a no-fly zone is not on the table at NATO. Whether it will [be] tomorrow or some other day, I don’t know, but it isn’t there yet. It isn’t, as far as I know, on the table of any NATO member, including, so far the United States.”
Earlier on Monday, Russia said that it will not allow a no-fly zone to be implemented over the war-town Middle Eastern country, in which at least 90,000 people were killed since March 2011.
“We saw with the example of Libya how such a zone is introduced and how such decisions are implemented. We do not want a repeat of this in respect to the Syria conflict. I think that we will not permit in principle such a scenario,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said.
In 2011, Russia allowed the deployment of a Libyan no-fly zone by not vetoing a U.N. resolution playing such a move.
