Inner City Press -- Investigative Reporting From the Inner City to Wall Street to the United Nations

At UN on Syria, Talks Tuesday on "Elements Not Form," Rifts on Degrees of Blame, IBSA Trip Called Separate

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, August 1, with video -- As the emergency Syria meeting of the UN Security Council broke up after six p.m. on Monday, a European Council member's spokesman bragged to the Press that there'll be consultations Tuesday "about a resolution."

 Earlier on Monday, Brazil's Permanent Representative Maria Viotti told Inner City Press, "We would be able to go along with a press statement, even with a PRST, I think that we would support that... Not a resolution, but a PRST or a press statement."

  While Lebanese journalists just outside Conference Room 6 demanded of Russian Permanent Representative Vitaly Churkin, "Why are you cornering Lebanon?" downstairs Ambassador Viotti and her counterpart from South Africa, Baso Sangqu, stopped to tell Inner City Press that their two countries remain united with India, the Council's president this month.

  "We are ready to talk about the elements," Viotti told Inner City Press, "but not yet the format. We are going to work on the elements, on the basis of principles expressed by India, Brazil and South Africa."

  Inner City Press asked about the trip to Damascus projected for the vice ministers of the so-called IBSA countries. "That's got nothing to the Security Council," Ambassador Sangqu said. "They can't tell us when to go there."

  Upstairs, Inner City Press asked US Ambassador Susan Rice about the IBSA trip, did she think it might be positive. "I don't even want to characterize the trip. Our business here is to speak strongly on behalf of the Council. The Assad government is prepared to use extraordinary violence against civilians." Click here for YouTube video.

Outside CR6, Prez Hardeep Singh Puri arrives in new venue

  Rice also said the US continues to think the situation merits a resolution, but less worried about form than substance.

 Sources who'd been inside the meeting indict a rift around the "degree to condemnation" of Assad in any statement or resolution.  We'll see -- watch this site.