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

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, July 30 -- It was supposed to be the last UN Security Council meeting on July, the wrap-up session, for the first time made public by Rwanda. But after the shelling of the UNRWA school in Gaza, a final July 31 meeting has been scheduled.

Chad in its wrap up said the Council has proved “impotent” on Gaza. Nigeria's Permanent Representative Joy Ogwu said the Presidential Statement, three weeks in, was too slow.

The representative of another African country, not currently on the Council, told Inner City Press of an upcoming ministerial meeting of the Non Aligned Movement in Tehran about Gaza, and said there has been discussion of the African Group, on its own, moving for action in the UN General Assembly.

  One could imagine the same from GRULAC: Bolivia, for example, has declared Israel a terrorist state (click here).

  Russia's Vitaly Churkin said the Presidential Statement was and is not “up to the situation.” He spoke of convening representatives from Washington in August to explain themselves or “brainstorm,” and of the long-dormant Quartet, for a ministerial meeting in September.

The Quartet's representative, Tony Blair, has just received an award from a university in Israel; meanwhile as PalTel announces on Facebook outages of cellular and Internet due to Israeli bombardment, where is Tony Blair?

  On Ukraine, Churkin said Resolution 2166 requires ceasing military activity by crash site - and said against that the commitment has been violated by Kyiv. He said Russia on July 28 proposed a press statement on implementing Reso 2166, but it got blocked. He said Australian representative in Eastern Ukraine Angus Houston has spoken, not negatively, of the militiamen.

  Australia's Gary Quinlan also brought up Angus Houston, adding that it has not been possible to access the crash site. But why not?

  The UK was represented by Permanent Representative Mark Lyall Grant, the president for August; he said his open debate will be on early warnings (bringing to mind, at least for Inner City Press, the Security Council's inaction on Sri Lanka in 2009).
 
  The US was representative by Deputy Rosemary DiCarlo. France, at the Political Coordinator level, declared Mali a success - which remains to be seen, like now-gone Gerard Araud's replacement Francois Delattre. Watch this site.