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At UN, Georgia Protesters Demand Council Action But
Veto Seems Sure
Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of
Inner City Press at the UN: News Analysis
UNITED NATIONS,
August 10 -- Outside the gates of
UN Headquarters on Sunday, protesters held up the white and red Georgia
flag
and signs denouncing Russia for its bombing campaign, pleading for help
from
the U.S. and from the UN. But inside the UN, despite another
photogenic debate
about regime and ethnic cleansing, very little was accomplished. The three-line
press statement that Russia offered Thursday night, calling on the
parties to
renounce the use of force, was declared dead. The U.S., France and UK
vowed to
draft a resolution which would force Russia, as the protesters' signs
put it,
stop the bombing.
As
Georgia's Ambassador Irakli Alasania walked past the protesters and
toward the
UN on Sunday afternoon, they let up a cheer, go get 'em. Inner City
Press ran
after Amb. Alasania and asked him about the next steps. "The U.S. and
Europeans are meeting about a resolution," he said. Later he admitted
that
Russia would probably veto it, but that would "isolate" Russia. As
happens when any of the Permanent Five members of the Security Council
are
involved, the UN is reduced to a place for political theater. Welcome,
as one close observer puts it, to the new
Cold War.
During
Sunday's debate, Georgia brought up the specter of Chechnya, and said
that if
left unchecked, Russia could do this to Ukraine or Armenia, Azerbaijan
or
Poland. Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin, on the other hand, brought
up U.S.
actions in Afghanistan, Serbia and Iraq. This last arose in response to
U.S.
Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad's asserting that Russia is looking for
regime change
in Georgia, that Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told Condi Rice that
Georgia's
president "has to go." Amb. Churkin responded that regime change is
an American concept, and strategy as in Iraq.
Russia
also questioned the objectivity of the UN's reporting on Georgia. This
critique
echoed Zimbabwe's complaint earlier this summer about the impartiality
of the
reports of the UN Department of Political Affairs. While Ban Ki-moon's
spokesperson
issued a shrill rebuke to Zimbabwe's challenge about fairness, even
over a weekend, it appears that no such response will be made to
Russia. Ban
Ki-moon is on vacation, and the UN is hardly a player in the conflict
throughout Georgia.
Georgians with flags, in a happier time
A
Georgian
diplomat told Inner City Press that he had still not been able to
evacuate his
family from an misbegotten vacation near South Ossetia. "Thank you for
everything," said another Georgian staffer. They gave Inner City Press
a
three-page, moment by moment presentation, from their side, of events
on the
ground in Georgia, beginning with "Oni was bombarded by Russian
aviation"
echoed by the "first group of Russian troops together with Gufta bridge
are destroyed by Georgian aerial bombardment."
There were
other echoes, too. In Moscow, protesters in front of Georgia's embassy
called
for Georgia's president, with a reported back-story as a lawyer in New
York, to
be sent to the Hague for trial as a war criminal. Out
on Fifth Avenue in front of St. Patrick's
Cathedral Sunday night, a lone Georgia protester held a flag in one
hand and in
the other a handwritten sign, Stop Now. Oh that it were so.
Watch
this
site. And this
(on South Ossetia), and
this --
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