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

On Syria, Germany Speaks of UN Resolution As Security Incident Shifts Meeting

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, August 1, updated -- An hour before its emergency Syria meeting, the UN Security Council got cleared out. The Press was told to move back to the elevator, then all the way to the General Assembly basement. The meeting was moved to Conference Room 6 in the North Lawn building.

   There, as the meeting began, Germany's Deputy Permanent Representative stopped and spoke of the March resolution circulated by the Security Council's European members.. Inner City Press asked if it's still the same one still. Updated, he said.

  Twenty minutes before the scheduled 5 pm start, Inner City Press found US Ambassador Susan Rice waiting in front of smaller Conference Room C. Word was she was looking for the pre-meeting with the Europeans, who sponsored the Syria resolution. But they did not show up there.
 
  Rice went downstairs and told the media, "We're talking about a resolution, we support that very strongly. We want to understand why other don't do the same, particularly given what's happened over the last couple days."
 
   Asked about the argument that NATO's use of Resolution 1973 on Libya has need to inaction on Syria, Rice said, "That's a canard, an excuse by those who don't want to confront what is happening in Syria."

(Separately, Inner City Press wanted to know and began to ask why Rice, the UK's Lyall Grant and Russia's Vitaly Churkin met together with Ban Ki-moon earlier on Monday. "Nothing to do with the Security Council," Churkin told Inner City Press.)

Russia's Churkin said that if the Europeans put forward the same resolution as before, it was a non starter. But he noted a new tone in Moscow's statement earlier in the day, on the violence in Syria.

Outside CR6, Prez Hardeep Singh Puri arrives in new venue

A well placed political coordinator said that it would not be possible for Lebanon to conveniently not attend, so that a press or presidential statement could be adopted. And Inner City Press saw a Lebanese representative enter Conference Room 6.

The buzz was of a request for consultations at the highest Permanent Representative level on Tuesday, on a resolution. But would Russia or China veto? Would India, Brazil and South Africa go along? Watch this site.