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Zimbabwe Resolution Unveiled, with Name Games
and Notice of Sanctions, Perhaps No Veto
Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of
Inner City Press at the UN: News Analysis
UNITED NATIONS,
July 3 -- As the U.S. Mission to
the UN unveiled its draft resolution to impose targeted sanctions on
Zimbabwe,
the Press was given a version with 11 targeted names, not 12. Missing
in the
draft the U.S. handed out was Gideon Gono, the central bank
governor.
But the UK mission said that Gono was and is on the list, and the U.S.
later
confirmed this. Was his omission, from the U.S. draft, a sign of some
alliance
between Washington and Harare high finance? "Don't read too much into
it," Inner City Press was told.
July's
president of
the Council, Vietnam's Le Luong Minh, was coaxed to
come out to the stakeout.
He said that the Council's meeting on Zimbabwe will be Tuesday,
something that
the U.S. but not he had said the previous day. The format, he said, is
still
under consideration. Inner City Press asked him if Deputy Secretary
General
Asha Rose Migiro will brief the Council. The format is still not
decided, he
repeated, but "of course" Migiro would be invited. Video here.
Ban Ki-moon and Mugabe, a mere month ago,
UNSC sanctions not shown
An African
Ambassador complained to Inner City Press that he thinks Migiro's job
will be
to present the mood at the African Union's Egypt meeting, which she
attended,
as more anti-Mugabe than in fact it was.
When Inner
City Press pointed out to this Ambassador that Kenyan prime minister
Odinga,
for example, criticized Mugabe, the response was, "but of course, since
he
too got outside help."
News analysis:
while Russian Ambassador Churkin on
July 2 said, "We don't like sanctions" and said that the regional
SADC process should be allowed to work, it not entirely sure that this
resolution would be vetoed. That South Africa would vote against it
appears to
be nearly certain. But South Africa does not have a veto. Could Russia
and
China be convinced to abstain rather than veto? A cynic might think
that since
by publishing the twelve names days in advance of the vote they can
just move
any money that might be frozen, perhaps abstentions -- even in exchange
for
this absurd advance notice -- might be expected. We'll see.
* * *
These reports are
usually also available through Google
News and on Lexis-Nexis.
Click
here for a Reuters
AlertNet piece by this correspondent
about Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army. Click
here
for an earlier Reuters AlertNet piece about the Somali National
Reconciliation Congress, and the UN's $200,000 contribution from an
undefined trust fund. Video
Analysis here
Feedback: Editorial
[at] innercitypress.com
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Other,
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in the ProQuest service, and now on Lexis-Nexis.
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