At
UN,
As Georgia Loses HRC Bid It Blames Russian Lobbying, 5 Votes
for Syria
By
Matthew
Russell Lee
UNITED
NATIONS,
May 20 -- Of the 17 countries
running Friday for 15 seats on
the UN Human Rights Council, only two were going to lose.
Inner City
Press asked the Permanent Representative of Georgia Alexander Lomaia
what he felt his chances were, facing off against Romania and the
Czech Republic for two Eastern European group seats.
Ambassador
Lomaia
said, without hesitation, that Russia had been asking countries not
to vote for Georgia, that at least two delegations had disclosed
this. In many UN fora, Georgia and Russia exchange rights of reply
regarding Abkhazia and South Ossetia. This is just one more battle.
After
the
election, in which Georgia got 89 votes but still lost to Romania's
131 and the Czech Republic's 148, Inner City Press asked a Russian
diplomat about the result. He smiled and said, “Oops.”
Nicaraguan
representatives
said they liked their chances, but they too took a
loss, despite receiving 98 votes. Austria pointed out that the two
votes cast for Australia were probably for it.
Syria tried
to play
down the five votes it received, after postponing its run to 2014, to
mere errors. If that was a write in campaign, it wasn't much.
Kuwait, Syria's replacement, waltzed in with 166 votes.
UN's Ban & Kuwait minister, human rights not shown
The Permanent
Representative of the Philippines, another winner with a clear or
unopposed slate, acknowledged to Inner City Press that there are
human rights issues in his country, such as unsolved killings of
journalists. But, he said, the trend line is up.
Later
on Friday in
the same General Assembly Hall, military bands of China and the US
played together. Only at the UN.
* * *
At
UN,
Kuwait
Denounced for Human Rights Council But Only 2 Contests
By
Matthew
Russell
Lee
UNITED
NATIONS,
May
19 -- On the eve of the UN General Assembly vote for 15
seats on the UN Human Rights Council, Nicaragua proudly predicted it
would win, and human rights sources described to Inner City Press on background
how and why Syria dropped out of the race.
They
said
Syrian
Permanent Representative Bashar Ja'afari was urging Damascus to drop
the run, so he could focus on defending Syria in the Security
Council.
While calling
replacement Kuwait is “better,”
they would have preferred a Pacific Island country for the Asia
Group, pointing out that Switzerland had offered to help such small
nations cover costs to come to Geneva.
At
a lunch briefing
thrown by Geneva-based UN Watch, Republic of
Congo and Kuwait were denounced as “unqualified,” among with Nicaragua.
The recent
coverage by Inner City Press of
Nicargua's former foreign minister Miguel d'Escoto Brockman, blocked
from even speaking at the UN, was cited.
Other
predicted winners India, Indonesia, Burkina Faso and the Philippines
were called “questionable.”
Of
these, only
Nicaragua faces a contested election, vying against three other
countries for only three Latin American and Caribbean Group seats:
Chile, Costa Rica and Peru.
While UN
Watch and also the US have
denounced that so-called “clean slates” in which a Group presents
the same number of candidates as seats, that is the case with the
Western European and Others Group of which the US is a member:
Austria and Italy will be elected.
Inner
City
Press
asked why WEOG has not practices what it preaches, and presented a
competition of some kind. Why this happened has yet to be explained.
The
other contested
election is in Eastern Europe, in which of Georgia, Romania and the
Czech Republic, one will have to lose. The Czechs recently held a
party at the Beer Garden in Astoria, and the Georgia's throw a party
on May 23 at a hotel in Midtown.
Romania, needing help from the
International Monetary Fund under now resigned Dominique
Strauss-Kahn, has perhaps been distracted. Watch this site.
* * *
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