Cameron’s foreign frustrations

David Cameron’s much trailed speech to the UN is tinged with frustration. He will say, “You can sign every human rights declaration in the world but if you stand by and watch people being slaughtered in their own country, when you could act then what are those signatures really worth? The UN has to show that we can be – not just united in condemnation, but – united in action acting in a way that lives up to the UNs founding principles and meets the needs of people everywhere.”

That seems to be a fairly thinly veiled reference to the global community’s indifference to oppression in Syria. The lack of action against Assad has exasperated the government; the Liberal Democrat Foreign Office Minister Jeremy Browne expressed those sentiments at a conference event yesterday. The UN’s reluctance is apparently the result of perceived “mission creep” in Libya, a perception that is particularly strong in Russia.