On
Settlements, ICP Asks Palestine
About ICC, UNSC Prez
Refers to Sam Power's
Spokesman
By Matthew
Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS,
January 25 – Before the UN
Security Council met about
Israeli settlements on January
25, Inner City Press asked
Palestine's Observer Riyad
Mansour about reports of moves
at the International Criminal
Court based on the December 23
resolution on which Samantha
Power abstained.
Tweeted
video here.
Mansour told Inner City Press
there is work on that.
After the
meeting, Security Council
President for January Olov
Skoog of Sweden was asked if
in the meeting, requested by
Bolivia, the US' position had
changed. He laughed and said
you'd have to ask the US press
officer -- Kurtis Cooper, a
face of Samantha Power,
standing at the stakeout on
January 25. Video
(with Gambia answer) here.
Earlier in
the day new Ambassador Nikki
Haley was sworn in by US Vice
President Mike Pence; she
tweeted her farewell to South
Carolina. Still, even as of
January 25 at 10 am, there
were no new photographs at the
US Mission to the UN to
replace those of Obama, Biden,
Kerry and Power. We'll have
more on this.
Back on
January 17 as the Security
Council began its last month
session on the Middle East and
Palestine before the change in
US administration before
week's end, Inner City Press
asked UK Ambassador Matthew
Rycroft about a recent
skirmish. Video
here, UK transcript
here:
Inner City Press:
Q: How about your Prime
Minister’s criticism of John
Kerry’s speech? How should we
read that?
Amb Rycroft: Well, the UK
supported resolution 2334 and
what she was saying was that
settlements are an obstacle to
peace, but not the only
obstacle to peace. And so what
we need to do is to make sure
that we are addressing all of
the obstacles to peace, as
indeed resolution 2234 did, by
also calling on all parties,
for instance, to end
terrorism, to end support for
terrorism, and to end
incitement.
Back on December 28 when
outgoing US Secretary of State
John Kerry belatedly began his
Middle East swansong speech, he
told the story of the December
23 resolution vote without
mentioning that New Zealand and
Senegal picked up the
Egypt-postponed resolution, and
that the US
didn't ask for any
postponement but rather
set the vote for 2 pm.
By the time Kerry
got to his or “our” proposals,
the speech had been on so long
that Qatar's Al Jazeera cut away
to a stand-up in West Jerusalem,
then a show about Ban
Ki-moon running for president
of South Korea. Kerry
spoke about Obama's and Susan
Rice's 2011 veto. Here's
Inner City Press' story then about
Rice's counter-offer of a
Presidential Statement and a
trip.
Kerry name-checked
UNESCO, which Qatar is primed to
take over, and Israel's
Ambassador to the UN Danny
Danon, from whom a response was
immediately expected. Watch this
site.
Before the UN Security Council voted
on December 23 at 2 pm on an
anti-settlements resolution,
approving it with the US only
abstaining, there was a closed
door consultation of the
Council.
Inner City Press has assembled this
video just outside.
Russia's Ambassador Vitaly
Churkin said that the way things
were happening projected an
impression of haste. (In the
consultation he had asked for a
delay past Christmas, Barak
Ravid reports,
after a call from Israel's Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to
Russian President Vladimir
Putin.)
US Ambassador Samantha
Power flatly refused to comment
on the upcoming vote. But
Venezuela's Ambassador Rafael
Ramirez, asked by a person with
a CNN microphone about the
consultation, said that the US
had only asked that the vote be
at two pm.
And so it happened. Longer
explanatory Inner City Press YouTube
here.
***
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