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At UN, Egypt's Gaza Text Beats Ecuador's, Bombing Continues,
No Vote for Cape Verde
Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of
Inner City Press at the UN: News Analysis
UNITED NATIONS,
January 17 -- In the UN General Assembly
on Friday night, the question asked was who cares more about the people
of
Palestine? At the end of two days of
debate about the war in or on Gaza, there were two competing draft
resolutions.
GA President Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann started it, with a what he
called a
presidential text. This could only be passed by consensus. After close
of
business on Friday, it became clear if it hadn't been before that there
was no
consensus. And then the games began.
D'Escoto
withdrew his proposal, and immediately called on the representative of
Ecuador.
She re-introduced d'Escoto's draft as her own, amending it to demand an
unconditional withdrawal from Gaza by Israel. Egypt's Ambassador
immediately
protested, first saying he had held up his name plate -- or "flag,"
as he called it -- before "the lovely woman" from Ecuador, as he
called her, to groans from many in the audience.
Then he
criticized d'Escoto
for not putting to the vote a compromise he had reached with the
European
Union, which also referred to the plight of Israeli civilians. The
Permanent
Observer of Palestine Riyad Mansour also spoke up for this compromise,
urging
the Assembly to vote on it and not Ecuador's more divisive proposal. Mansour had told the Press earlier in the day
that he thought d'Escoto's draft would pass, "but I'm not saying I'm
happy
with it." Inner City Press video at www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdUAg0q21Qc.
D'Escoto adjourned the meeting.
PGA d'Escoto, Mansour in his ear, Shaaban bars Cape Verde
Out in the
hallway, the Ambassador of Syria spoke to a group of diplomats by the
coffee
machine. Inner City Press went to the floor of Conference Room 3 to get
a copy
of Ecuador's just-printed amendments.
Various Ambassadors approached to tell Inner City
Press that this was
"sad" and "another example of how broken the Assembly is."
An Arab diplomat said it would be funny if it were on another topic,
but not
the bombing of Gaza.
A Western
Ambassador, Permanent Five member of the
Security Council, said that Israel might be best helped by a vote on
Ecuador's
draft. D'Escoto's spokesman graciously explained the jockeying about
the rules,
saying Inner City Press should be rewarded for working so hard, and so
late.
But many Ambassador stayed to nine p.m. The war in or on Gaza has gone
on for
more than three weeks.
It finally
ended with a whimper, not a bang. Egypt called for and won a procedural
vote,
to put its proposal before that of Ecuador. Then Egypt's and the EU's
draft was
adopted, and all that was left to fight about was whose vote was
mis-recorded,
and who hadn't been allowed to vote. Cape Verde's representative
screamed that
he had, in fact, paid his dues, and anyway was were Afghanistan and
Bangladesh
allowed to vote? People laughed, and garbage time was entered. And in
Gaza the
bombs kept falling.
Click here for Inner City Press'
review-of-2008 UN Top Ten debate
Click here for Inner
City Press' December 24 debate on UN budget, Niger
Click here from Inner City Press'
December 12 debate on UN double standards
Click here for Inner
City Press' November 25 debate on Somalia, politics
Click here for Inner City
Press Nov. 7 debate on the war in Congo
Watch this site, and this Oct. 2 debate, on
UN, bailout, MDGs
and this October 17 debate, on
Security Council and Obama and the UN.
* * *
These
reports are
usually also available through Google
News and on Lexis-Nexis.
Click
here
for a Reuters
AlertNet piece by this correspondent
about Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army. Click
here
for an earlier Reuters AlertNet piece about the Somali
National
Reconciliation Congress, and the UN's $200,000 contribution from an
undefined trust fund. Video
Analysis here
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[at] innercitypress.com
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