At
UN,
Raising
Israel's
Settlements
Called
"Ill-Timed,"
After Child
Soldiers
Meeting
By
Matthew
Russell Lee,
Exclusive
UNITED
NATIONS,
January 10 --
The
humanitarian
consequences
of Israel's
policy of
settlements
was raised in
the UN
Security
Council late
on
Tuesday
afternoon,
after a closed
door meeting
about Children
and
Armed
Conflict.
Morocco,
replacing
Lebanon as the
Council's Arab
member,
requested that
the Council
get
a briefing on
the topic.
There was an
attempt to
expand the
topic to
cover other
issues, and
actors, but it
was resisted.
And
then "one
country" --
the host
country, the
US, a well
placed source
told
Inner City
Press --
called
Morocco's
request
"ill-timed and
counter-productive."
Others said
after that it
is the
settlements
that are
ill-timed.
The
request made
by Morocco was
foreshadowed
by recent
statements by
Palestine's
Observer to
the UN Riyad
Mansour. He
often refers,
including on
the
question of
Palestine's
application
for full UN
membership, to
the
opposition of
"a single
powerful
member," the
US.
Whether
or not there
are now nine
votes in the
Council in
favor of
Palestinian UN
membership,
the US remains
the outlier,
the source
said, even
behind closed
doors.
(c) UN Photo
Morocco's FM
Taïb
Fassi Fihri,
PR Loulichki
& team,
Jan 10 request
not yet shown
The
meeting that
preceded
Morocco's
request
involved the
UN's Children
and Armed
Conflict
representative
Radhika
Coomaraswamy
being
questioned
about
how her Office
decides to
include
countries in
her Annual
Reports.
Already
India and
Colombia, as
current
Council
members, had
been raising
these
questions. Now
Pakistan has
joined the
Council.
Coomaraswamy's
report
says that the
UN has no
access to the
Federally
Administered
Territories in
Pakistan; it
says that
Colombia's
national army
used
Children for
intelligence.
One
quip in reply
was that, "We
have very
intelligent
children." A
more
detailed
presentation
from those
most skeptical
of what they
call
Coomaraswamy's
"mandate
creep" has
been promised
-- watch
this site.
, 
