At
UN
on Libya, US Didn't Raise Arming Rebels in 1st Session on
Sanctions
By
Matthew
Russell Lee
UNITED
NATIONS,
March 27 -- Barely an hour after Obama administration
spokesman Jay Carney argued in a Washington press conference that the
UN Security
Council resolutions imposing an arms embargo on Libya
have the “flexibility” to allow arming the Benghazi based rebels,
the US took part in the first meeting of the Council's Libya
sanctions committee.
In
the closed door
meeting, however, the US did not disclose or argue for the
permissibility of any plans to arm the rebels, the Portuguese
committee chair Jose Filipe Mendes Moraes Cabral on the record and a
range of other participants told Inner City
Press.
According
to
sources in the meeting -- not the Chairman or anyone in the
Portuguese Mission -- the US representative asked only to discuss
additions to the sanctions list, and asked that the rules of the
committee be called “provisional,” allowing future changes.
No
date for a
second meeting of the committee was agreed to, or requested by the
US.
As
the US knows,
the chairman of the committee has expressed his view that the
wordings of the two resolutions, including a phrase in Paragraph 4 of
Resolution 1973 that seems to create an exception to the arms
embargo, do not permit giving weapons to the rebels.
And
after the
meeting, other members of the committee including a country with a
population over one billion said it was “absolutely clear” that
the resolutions do not allow for arming the rebels.
A
source in the
room while Resolution 1973 was being negotiated said that US
Permanent Representative Susan Rice explained that she needed the
“notwithstanding” loophole for a situation in which the US might
have to go in with weapons to save a downed pilot, and wouldn't want
merely carrying weapons to violate the arms embargo.
So
the US said one
thing at the UN to explain, as quasi legislative history history, an
exception in the arms embargo, and now says another thing from
Washington.
Susan Rice, Obama and Clinton, negotiation of
Paragraph 4 and new position not shown
(Susan Rice,
it's said, will be back at the UN on Monday.)
Chairman
Cabral has
explained that the sanctions committee could take up the possibility
of arming the rebels. But if the US just did it, the committee would
have to be unanimous to condemn it.
It
is similar to UN
Secretary General Ban Ki-moon naming Jordanian businessman and
Senator Al Khatib as the UN's envoy to Libya despite financial
conflicts of interest, then saying that a financial disclosure not
due until March 2012 is the only way and time to address it. Ah, the
rule of law. Watch this site.
Footnotes:
also
in the first meeting of the Libya sanctions committee meeting,
there was discussion of a query from Belarus about the scope of the
resolution's asset freeze -- the US proposed a response that the
freeze did NOT apply to the entities Belarus asked about -- and a
recitation of approval given an emergency basis to a request by
Senegal to extract its citizens from Libya on a Gambian plane.
All
of these make
more clear the lack of transparency of the process. Ukraine wrote it
about extracting its national, and got listed as one of the dozen
supporting the no fly zone. They protested, and were dropped from the
list.
Others have
written in, but call it a “note verbal,” and
are not listed. And STILL the UN Spokesperson's office has not
confirmed what Inner City Press reported on March 25, that Kuwait
wrote in to say it will help with humanitarian. Some system.
* * *
On
Libya,
UN
Resolution Left Arming & Funding Rebels Unresolved, But
Intervention Permitted
By
Matthew
Russell
Lee, Analysis
UNITED
NATIONS,
March
23 -- Can countries legally provide weapons to the
Libyan rebels in Benghazi and elsewhere?
The
question has been
asked, so far without clear answer, of UN diplomats since the passage
of Security Council Resolution 1973 on March 17.
One
major proponent
of the resolution claims to be checking with its top lawyer, despite
its role in drafting the resolution.
The
Security
Council's first Libya resolution,
1970, imposed an arms embargo in
its 9th paragraph. But resolution
1973 permits member states to “take
all necessary measures, notwithstanding paragraph 9 of resolution
1970 (2011), to protect civilians” in Libya.
What
does
this
“notwithstanding” mean? Is the arms embargo entirely trumped? At
least one major nation, with a long common law legal history, is not
sure.
What
about others? It is reported that Egypt began allowing
arms transfers to the rebels hours after resolution 1973 was adopted.
Is Egypt in violation of resolution 1970? If so, who would say and do
anything about it?
Why
would major
countries leave such an obvious unclarity in their work product?
Cynics or realists say that it is intentional, to allow the powerful
to do whatever they want.
Photo composite Telegraphs identity of vituperator?
These
same
proponents
of Resolution 1973 are now complaining that the press is
misreporting what the resolution prohibits. Only “foreign
occupation” is precluded, they point out, not “intervention.”
Still they claim they do not intend to intervene.
Resolution
1973
left
for another day the logistics of transferring Gaddafi's frozen
funds to the rebels or people of Libya. In the Iraq Oil for Food
program, BNP Paribas' actions led, even years later, to France
abstaining from Iraq resolutions in the Security Council. So will
escrow accounts be set up in the case of Libya, “notwithstanding”
the Oil for Food scandal? Watch this site.
* * *
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