At
UN,
Portugal Will Chair Libya Sanctions Committee, Hope To Never
Staff It
By
Matthew
Russell Lee, Exclusive
UNITED
NATIONS,
March 3 -- Portugal will chair the Libya Sanctions Committee
of the UN Security Council, Inner City Press is informed. The formal
decision will come on Tuesday, March 8.
The
hope, the
source said, is that “it will be a short term committee” and that
“the need for sanctions will disappear.”
Inner
City Press
had earlier heard, from a UN sanctions source, that the Libya
Sanctions Committee would not even be staffed.
The
source said
that it take one or two months to appoint a group of experts, and the
hope is that by that time, there will be no need: that is, Gadhafi
will be gone.
Portugal's Perm Rep meets Ban, staffing of
Libya Sanctions committee not shown
For
now, the
process is for the decision to be formalized at the Council's next
session on March 8. Then the chair, Portugal's Permanent
Representative to the UN Jose Filipe Mendes Moraes Cabral, will
consult with other Council members and draft a letter to all member
states about their Libya sanctions obligations.
The process of
appointing experts will begin, but they are hoping it will never be
completed. We'll see.
* * *
At
UN,
Libyan Dabbashi Predicts Inaction by UN on Gadhafi's Ouster
Letter, Visa & Shalgam Questions
By
Matthew
Russell Lee, Exclusive
UNITED
NATIONS,
March 3 -- Hours after the UN confirmed receiving a letter
from the Gadhafi government to withdraw the credentials of
Ambassadors Ibrahim Dabbashi and Shalgam, Inner City Press asked
Dabbashi what he thought the UN would do.
“Nothing,”
Dabbashi said. “The regime is already illegitimate.”
But
while a
senior UN official on Wednesday night told Inner City Press about the
letter and the possibility of referring it to the UN Office of Legal
Affairs for a long consideration, others say it is an open and shut
case. Gadhafi is still viewed the UN as the head of state, and his
government gets to choose who represents him at the UN.
“Even though
we'd have to hold our nose,” a well placed Secretariat official
told Inner City Press, “the principle is bigger than this one
case.”
The
principle is
that each country has one recognized head of state -- even if like
Alassane Ouattara in Cote d'Ivoire they control only a single hotel
-- and that person chooses their representatives.
Dabbashi at UN microphone, Gadhafi's letter not shown
Others
have
guessed that the United States could try to deny visas for any new
diplomats whom Gadhafi might send. But under the US' Host Country
Agreement with the United Nations, the US has to allow in people
accredited to the UN.
At most the
US can impose resistrictions on
them such as not being able to travel more than 25 miles from
Columbus Circle, or not being able to visit Ground Zero.
So
despite
Dabbashi's statement, it seems clear that through time, if Gadhafi is
not ousted, Shalgam and Dabbashi will be, from the UN. The US, one
assumes, won't revoke their visas and make them go back to a
Gadhafi-fun Libya....
At Thursday's
noon briefing, Inner City Press asked UN Spokesman Martin Nesirky to
confirm receipt of Gadhafi's letter. Nesirky confirmed it and said it
is being studied. He said he didn't know the date on the letter, since
he hadn't actually seen the letter.
Footnote:
Shalgam
is being sought to explain his role in a deal struck between
Italy, Gadhafi and Saddan Hussein, under which Saddam would have been
given asylum in Libya. Shalgam is head to have cut the deal in Rome.
Then, the US is said to have intervened with Gadhafi to stop it.
Might this give Shalgam some leverage? Might he want to talk about it
more at this time? Watch this site.
* * *
In
Libya,
70,000 from Bangladesh Trapped, Gadhafi
Asks for UN Seats Back
By
Matthew
Russell Lee
UNITED
NATIONS,
March 2 -- The fighting in Libya resonates through the UN in
New York, not only in the Security Council and General
Assembly but
in talks between Missions and UN agencies and even at receptions.
Bangladesh's
Permanent
Representative Abulkalam Abdul Momen told Inner City Press
on Wednesday night that his country has 70,000 citizens still in
Libya, and doesn't have the resources to get them out.
He said the
the UN refugee agency UNHCR told him they can do little more than ask
Egypt and Tunisia to let people in.
Looking
ahead, he
said that if Saudi Arabia faces protests, it will be much worse for
Bangladesh, which has 2.7 million of its national working in Saudi
Arabia. In Libya, the Bangladesh embassy has only three Bengladeshi
staff members. The local hires, Momen said, don't come in to work
anymore.
Along
with Momen,
Inner City Press went to speak the Belgium's Permanent Representative
Jan Grauls. His country had only 70 of its national in Libya. Fifteen
of them, he said, were dual Libyan citizens who decided to stay. The
rest have been evacuated.
“They have the
money to do that,” Momen whispered.
Told
that
Gadhafi's government has written to the UN to strip the credentials
of Ambassadors Shalgam and Dabbashi, who both denounced the Colonel,
Grauls mused that this raised interesting legal issue since Gaddafi,
or at least Libya, has now been referred to the International
Criminal Court.
Momen & Ban,
assistance to Bangladesh's
trapped in Libya not shown
But
Sudan's Omar
al Bashir has been indicted for genocide by the ICC, but still names
his ambassadors to the UN. Will the UN now have to disbar Shalgam and
Dabbashi, whose speeches have been called so courageous and moving?
Watch this site.
Footnote:
On
another matter Bangladesh's Permanent Representative Abulkalam
Abdul Momen bemoaned to Inner City Press the international
community's interference in venerating and defending the Grameen
Bank's Muhammad Yunus, who he said evaded taxes and is past
retirement age.
“But
we're not supposed to do anything, because it
has important friends,” Momen said, wondering whatever happened to
the call for the rule of law. What about the high interest rates?
, 
