Inner City Press -- Investigative Reporting From the Inner City to Wall Street to the United Nations

Georgia & Russia Up Votes in GA, Cyprus Abstains, Greece & Netherlands Absent

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, July 4 -- When the annual vote on Georgia and the right of Internally Displaced People to return was held July 3 in the UN General Assembly, there were a few notable changes from last year, mostly questions of absence.

  The pro-Georgia voted went up, from 57 to 60, but so did what's called the pro-Russian, from 13 to 15. Both years there were many abstentions.

  But this year, after Cyprus abstained, Greece was listed as "absent." And most notable, the Netherlands was absent.

 This follows sources tell Inner City Press that the Netherlands, in the secret ballot for the next President of the General Assembly, voted not for the Lithuanian but for Serbia's Vuk Jeremic, who won with 99 votes (Inner City Press had predicted 97.)

Last year, when Inner City Press asked Georgia's Ambassador Lomaia to name the countries he said had broken with Russia, he said “Nauru, Solomon Islands, PNG,” referring to Papua New Guinea.

  This year, Nauru was back to voting with Russia. And so it goes at the UN.