The UN Security Council will meet in a new round of consultations on Thursday in order to discuss the situation in Syria, said Vitaly Churkin, permanent representative of Russia to the UN and the council president for December, Xinhua reported.
"We informed colleagues that we are calling a new round of consultations for tomorrow and we are working very hard but the fact of the matter is that the first round of consultations produced quite a few amendments or proposals from our colleagues," Churkin told reporters outside the council chambers.
Syria has been in turmoil since mid-March when anti-government protests broke out, along with clashes between protesters and security forces that have resulted in more than 5,000 deaths.
The council has not yet been successful at passing a full resolution on violence in Syria, but Russia has submitted a draft that is under negotiation by members. In August, the council did manage to pass a less legally powerful presidential statement which called for "an immediate end to all violence" in the Middle Eastern nation.
"So we are trying to see how we can build common ground in the spirit of the presidential statement of August 3, because this is the essence of our effort in the first place, to try to reignite the common voice of the members of the Security Council on the situation in Syria given positive developments in terms of the agreement which was signed between Syria and the Arab League on the monitoring mission but also given troubling reports about continued violence in the country," Churkin said.
On Dec. 19, Syria agreed to let the Arab League send an observer mission into the country. The signing of the observer protocol came after the pan-Arab group threatened to submit the issue to the Security Council.