At UN's
Meeting on Jerusalem, Russian Gambit Leaves Libya Standing Alone, U.S.
With Buyer's Remorse?
Byline:
Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at the UN: News Analysis
UNITED NATIONS, March 6 -- The Security
Council's emergency meeting Thursday night in the wake of the killing of
eight students in a Jerusalem religious school broke up after an hour,
with Israel's Ambassador Dan Gillerman calling Libya a terrorist state
that should not even be a member of the United Nations. Libya's
representative Ibrahim Dabbashi returned the invective, saying Libya
needs no certificate of good conduct from the "Israeli terrorist
regime." He said that "four or five countries" also asked for
condemnation of the killing of innocents in Gaza.
Inner City Press asked him to name these five
countries, or even four or three. He declined, saying "we don't have to
disclose." Inner City Press followed up with several Council diplomats,
who sketched a process in which three members joined Libya in asking
that Gaza be included in the American-drafted press statement. But after
Russia's Vitaly Churkin, president of the Council for March, proposed a
formula in which the loss of all civilian life in the overall conflict
would be condemned, followed by the specific incident in Jerusalem,
Libya was the only one to speak in opposition. "After the break," a
diplomat told Inner City Press, "there was only the U.S. putting Libya
on the spot to support. And Libya refused."
In this scenario, both statements
could technically be true: Israel's and the U.S.'s statement that "only
Libya" -- after Amb. Churkin's formulation -- opposed condemning the
Jerusalem attack, and Libya's statement that four (or at least three)
countries joined in it urging that Gaza be included, before the Churkin
gambit, that is.
Libya's
representative
at the UN: certificate of good conduct not
shown
News analysis:
does the U.S. have "buyer's remorse" about not opposing Libya's election
to the Security Council? Given Libya's recent face-offs with the U.S.
about Gaza and Israel -- but not Iran -- one might think, yes. But
according to a theory spun to Inner City Press by one cynical wag, some
in the U.S. administration like to see the U.N. and Security
Council weak and ineffectual. Libya has twice now been outflanked and
left to be standing alone. A pattern is emerging.
* * *
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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.
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