U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told the Council that the United States does “not believe that sovereignty demands that this council stand silent when governments massacre their own people, threatening regional peace and security in the process.” “We reject any equivalence between premeditated murders by a government’s military machine and the actions of civilians under siege driven to self-defense,” Clinton said. “How cynical that, even as Assad was receiving former Secretary-General Kofi Annan, the Syrian army was conducting a fresh assault on Idlib and continuing its aggression in Hama, Homs, and Rastan.” --MORE 12:04 LOCAL TIME 09:04 GMT www.spa.gov.sa/979066