ICP
Asks UK Rycroft About Theresa May's Jab at
Kerry's Speech on Settlements
By Matthew
Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS,
January 17 – As the UN
Security Council began its
last month session on January
17 on the Middle East and Palestine
before the change in US
administration before week's
end, Inner City Press asked UK
Ambassador Matthew Rycroft
about a recent skirmish. Video
here, UK transcript
here:
Inner City Press:
Q: How about your Prime
Minister’s criticism of John
Kerry’s speech? How should we
read that?
Amb Rycroft: Well, the UK
supported resolution 2334 and
what she was saying was that
settlements are an obstacle to
peace, but not the only
obstacle to peace. And so what
we need to do is to make sure
that we are addressing all of
the obstacles to peace, as
indeed resolution 2234 did, by
also calling on all parties,
for instance, to end
terrorism, to end support for
terrorism, and to end
incitement.
Back on December 28 when
outgoing US Secretary of State
John Kerry belatedly began his
Middle East swansong speech, he
told the story of the December
23 resolution vote without
mentioning that New Zealand and
Senegal picked up the
Egypt-postponed resolution, and
that the US
didn't ask for any
postponement but rather
set the vote for 2 pm.
By the time Kerry
got to his or “our” proposals,
the speech had been on so long
that Qatar's Al Jazeera cut away
to a stand-up in West Jerusalem,
then a show about Ban
Ki-moon running for president
of South Korea. Kerry
spoke about Obama's and Susan
Rice's 2011 veto. Here's
Inner City Press' story then about
Rice's counter-offer of a
Presidential Statement and a
trip.
Kerry name-checked
UNESCO, which Qatar is primed to
take over, and Israel's
Ambassador to the UN Danny
Danon, from whom a response was
immediately expected. Watch this
site.
Before the UN Security Council voted
on December 23 at 2 pm on an
anti-settlements resolution,
approving it with the US only
abstaining, there was a closed
door consultation of the
Council.
Inner City Press has assembled this
video just outside.
Russia's Ambassador Vitaly
Churkin said that the way things
were happening projected an
impression of haste. (In the
consultation he had asked for a
delay past Christmas, Barak
Ravid reports,
after a call from Israel's Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to
Russian President Vladimir
Putin.)
US Ambassador Samantha
Power flatly refused to comment
on the upcoming vote. But
Venezuela's Ambassador Rafael
Ramirez, asked by a person with
a CNN microphone about the
consultation, said that the US
had only asked that the vote be
at two pm.
And so it happened. Longer
explanatory Inner City Press
YouTube here.
***
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