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

On Syria, Rose Colored Glasses in Garden Make Del Ponte & GA Debacle Invisible

UNITED NATIONS, May 16 -- When Turkey's prime minister Erdogan and US President Obama took questions Thursday in the Rose Garden, inevitably the Internal Revenue Service and AP phone records scandal were raised. But there was a lot of Syria, too, or one side of the Syria issue.

  There were questions about chemical weapons, with Erdogan saying "we all share information," then naming the UK but notably not France, which also wrote to UN prober Sellstrom.

  Not mentioned was UN panelist Carla Del Ponte, who spoke of strong suspicions that the rebels and not the government used chemical weapons. That was quickly countered not only by Obama's spokesman Jay Carney but by the UN itself.

At the UN, Ban Ki-moon's spokesperson told Inner City Press it obviously hadn't read the press release of Del Ponte's co-panelist Paulo Pinheiro. But can Del Ponte's statements be erased so quickly?

  Obama said one purpose of assembling information about chemical weapons is to show it to the international community to get them to act on Syria.

   But yesterday in the UN General Assembly, the "yes" vote count on Qatar's anti-Assad resolution feel from 133 last time to 107. This was not mentioned in the Rose Garden. There, on this issue at least, it's all about rose colored glasses, even in the rain. Watch this site.