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On Georgia, UN Council Devolves
to War of Words, Of Kosovo and TV Bombs
Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of
Inner City Press at the UN: News Analysis
UNITED
NATIONS, August 28 -- On
Georgia, what was called the Six Point Plan has been whittled down to
five.
Outside the Security Council, Inner City Press asked Russian Ambassador
Vitaly
Churkin how, after his country's recognition of the declarations of
independence
by South Ossetia and Abkhazia, he envisioned implementing Point Six, "international
discussion of lasting security and stability arrangements for South
Ossetia and
Abkhazia."
"That is now assured," Churkin answered. Video here.
Inside
the Council Chamber, he pointedly asked if the U.S. had found weapons
of mass
destruction in Iraq, and why Costa Rica recognized the unilateral
declaration
of independence of Kosovo but not South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Costa
Rica's
Ambassador Jorge Urbina took the floor and pointed out among other
things that
his country will vote in the General Assembly to support Serbia's
resolution
calling of an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice
on the
legality of Kosovo's declaration of independence. When Inner City Press
asked
U.S. Ambassador Alejandro Wolff if the U.S. will be supporting Serbia's
resolution, he answered that the U.S. has not yet taken a position.
Video here.
U.S. Amb. Wolff -- support for International
Court of Justice and visas not shown
Kosovo came up again and again in the debate, and
then afterwards at the
Press stakeout. Churkin said that while NATO had bombed Serbian
television,
Russia has not bombed Georgian TV, despite its content. (The reference
may also
have been to Rwanda's Radio Television Milles Collines, the poster
child of
ethnic hatred media that was also never bombed, but whose officials
were later
indicted and convicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for
Rwanda.)
At the stakeout, Inner City Press asked Amb. Wolff
about Churkin's
argument, and Wolff called it specious. Inner City Press pointed out
that
several Security Council resolutions about Kosovo had referred to
Serbia's
territorial integrity, before that integrity was dismissed earlier this
year.
Wolff responded that Serbian territorial integrity was surrendered
earlier,
with Russia's approval, when resolutions were passed calling for the
withdrawal
of Serbian military forces from Kosovo, and turning over authority in
Kosovo to
the United Nations. Video here.
When Inner City Press asked Churkin to respond,
he said that it was the UN's administration of Kosovo which made its
declaration of independence, and 45 countries' recognition of it, all
the more
illegal. Video here.
And so it goes at the UN and Security Council.
Watch
this
site. And this (on
South Ossetia),
this, on
Russia-Georgia,
and
this --
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