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At UN, Russian Drone
Denials, Ties for Beijing Games, France's Earplug Storm-Out
Byline: Matthew
Russell Lee of Inner City Press at the UN: News Muse
UNITED NATIONS,
April 23, updated April 24,
10:20 a.m. -- Who shot down the Georgian drone over
Abkhazia? Wednesday morning
outside the UN Security Council, the Georgian delegation gave the Press
a copy
of a compact disk containing video seemingly shot from the drone. Land
appears
beneath, then a jet in the sky. A missile is fire and approached. The
screen
goes to static. Georgia's representative told reporters that in the
region, only
Russia has that kind of jet. Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin,
meanwhile, gave
the drone flight provocative, and noted that Abkhazia claims to have
shot down
the drone.
Inner City Press asked Amb. Churkin
for Russia's position on Tblisi's offer of forms of autonomy to
Abkhazia. While
calling the proposal hardly new, Churkin also criticized the Security
Council
for not allowing any Abkhaz representative to come and speak to the
Council. Video here.
After Georgia's representative reign
minister answered Inner City Press' question about peacekeeping by
arguing
Russia should not longer be allowed to domination the Abkhazia mission,
Inner
City Press asked this month's Council president Dumisani Kumalo how the
private
meeting had done. It was like a bilateral, he said, Georgia and Russia
talking,
they could have done it on their own. Asked if he'd seen the drone
video, he
said, "this place and video," shaking his head. Video
here.
South African Ambassador Kumalo, as
he spoke, wore a Beijing Olympics tie. The Games are going to be great,
he
pointedly told reporters.
Peacekeepers in Abkhazia, shot-down drone not shown
As Security Council President, Kumalo
had been so hopeful. After a session Wednesday morning in which the
lack of
running water and electrical power in the Gaza Strip was detailed,
Kumalo
convened the Council late Wednesday to agree on a short statement on
the
problem.
But
according to sources in the closed door meeting, when Libya's
Deputy Permanent
Representative compared life in the Occupied Palestinian Territories to
that in the
concentration camps in World War II, French Ambassador Jean-Maurice
Ripert
yanked off his translation ear phone and stormed out of the room,
followed by
"other Western Ambassadors."
This group did not include the UK's
Permanent Representative John Sawers, according to him, because he was
not
there at the time. Syria's Ambassador, asked at the stakeout about
Libya's
comments, said that the comparison to World War II was accurate. And so
it goes
at the UN.
Update
of April 24, 10:20 a.m. -- Libya's Deputy Permanent Representative,
off-camera at the stakeout Thursday morning, confirmed his earlier
comments and raised them: he said the situation in Gaza is worse that
in the concentration camps, because of "daily bombing." The U.S. Deputy
Permanent Representative Alejandro Wolff confirmed that he, too, walked
out of Wednesday's meeting once the comparison was made. One wire
service correspondent asked another, "Is there a second day story?" The
answer seems to be yes, the Glass House in the news....
* * *
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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