BEIRUT: A U.N. diplomat has said that even if the Security Council agrees on a resolution condemning Syria, it will not do so while Lebanon is council president, according to the Kuwait News Agency.

The unnamed diplomat told KUNA that Lebanon “does not want to be remembered in history” as the neighbor that allowed sanctions to be imposed on the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad.

The presidency of the Security Council rotates monthly in alphabetical order. Lebanon currently holds the presidency for the month of September.

The Lebanese government – in which the March 8 coalition, led by Syrian ally Hezbollah, holds a majority – has sought to avoid taking a strong stand internationally on the uprising in Syria.

In August it disassociated itself after the fact from a United Nations Security Council presidential statement condemning the violent crackdown there. Earlier this month Prime Minster Najib Mikati said the country did not have the power to confront the international community, adding that Lebanon “isolates itself” from Syria.

Foreign Minister Adnan Mansour Saturday told a Lebanese radio station that Lebanon would not approve a U.N. Security Council Resolution condemning Syria.

"Even Russia will not accept a decision against Syria in the form that the West wants," the minister said in an interview with Sawt al-Mada radio station. 

British Ambassador to the U.N. Mark Lyall Grant told reporters Saturday that it still hopes to present a resolution jointly drafted by Britain and France earlier this year and supported by Germany and Portugal and the U.S., to the Security Council.

"We are continuing consultations with other Council members. We are not taking it off the table and we do hope to put it forward to a vote before too long,” KUNA quoted him as saying.

Two permanent members with veto power, Russia and China, still oppose the resolution, having argued that the Syrian government should be given the chance to reform.

According to the latest U.N. figures, some 2,600 Syrian civilians have died and tens of thousands more are detained or missing.

Next in line to assume the presidency is Nigeria. A Syrian delegation traveled to the country’s capital, Abuja, in August to lobby the government not to support calls for international sanctions against Assad’s government, according to the News Agency of Nigeria.