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At UN, France's Ripert Chided by Sarkozy on Serbia
Resolution, of Belgian Banks
Byline:
Matthew Russell Lee of
Inner City Press at the UN: News Muse
UNITED NATIONS,
September 29 -- Monday at the UN
was a case of triple witching. Last week Zimbabwe's Robert
Mugabe called a correspondent
here "a witch," then said that he was joking. But Monday marked the
end of the General Debate, the end of Burkina Faso's presidency of the
Security
Council, and to some, the end of waiting to see if a financial
bailout bill
would pass the U.S. Congress.
In reverse
order, mid-afternoon found Jan Grauls, the Ambassador of Security
Council
member Belgium, watching U.S. television about the vote in Congress.
Amazing,
he said. He asked Inner City Press if the House of Representative could
simply
re-vote on the bill. Yes, he was told, like the Security Council the
Congress
is master of its own procedure. But it would be hard to vote again on a
vetoed
resolution, he said. Hard but not illegal.
He added that former Belgian bank Belgolaise, which
had been active in
the Congo, was swallowed by the just bailed-out Fortis, which he
personally
avoids.
Down at the
Council stakeout, Burkina Faso's Michel Kafando read the final press
statement
of his Presidency, about the bombing in Tripoli. Afterwards Inner City
Press
asked him both if the case will be referred to the Hariri Tribunal, and
to
summarize his month at the top of the Council. No and satisfied, he
answered,
noting that of the problems before the Council in September, none had
been
vetoed.
Later, at
the Burkinabe reception replete with Italian cold cuts and
sushi, one of his staffers added that they were lucky to come between
the
Georgian
war and the upcoming
fight about invoking Article 16 of the Rome
Statute to potentially freeze the International Criminal Court's
prosecution of
Sudanese president Omar Al-Bashir.
Ion Botnaru watches Mauritius' Somduth
Soborun swing the gavel, it's over
The
reception began even as the final speeches of the General Debate were
made.
Djibouti, it appears, never did speak. One of the last was Somduth
Soborun of
Mauritius, who incongruously said "Mauritius severely condemns the
decision of Myanmar's military junta to prolong the house arrest of Ms.
Aung
San Suu Kyi." Given African Union position, Inner City Press asked him
about it afterwards. "We supported Nelson Mandela," he said. "So
how can we not similarly support Aung San Suu Kyi?"
One
Security Council Ambassador who reportedly got criticized by his boss
is
France's Jean-Maurice Ripert, who told Inner City Press that Serbia's
request
for a General Assembly resolution for an International Court of Justice
advisory opinion on the legality of Kosovo's independence causes
"turbulence."
When Inner City Pres asked Serbian foreign minister Vuk
Jeremic about this quote, Jeremic
scoffed that in the Balkan, they know what
real turbulence is, and this isn't it. French President Nicolas
Sarkozy
apparently agrees, and according to well-placed sources told Ripert he
is not
authorized to speak this way on the issue.
We've saved
the hardest news for last: it also appears that the United States will
vote
against the Serbian resolution.
Watch this site, and this (UN) debate.
* * *
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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