After
UN's
Nuclear Meeting on Syria, Russia Calls It History, Damascus a
Campaign
By
Matthew
Russell Lee
UNITED
NATIONS,
July 14 -- Even before the UN Security Council began meeting
Thursday afternoon about the Dair Alzour in Syria, China's Deputy
Permanent Representative Wang told the Press that “the issue
shouldn't be here, it no longer exists.”
A
Russian
representative called Inner City Press aside and said, “We are only
here because we are Council members. The Council is for threats to
international peace and security, not for history.”
After
Israel bombed
Dair Alzour, the facility was destroyed. After the briefing -- and
after for example French Ambassador Gerard Araud walked by the media
assembled outside without saying anything -- Syria's Ambassador
Bashar Ja'afari came out.
First
he read to
the press from former International Atomic Energy Agency director
ElBaradei's book, “The Age of Deception,” about Israel's attack.
Then he said that even if there were radiation at the site, it could
have come from the bombs Israel had used.
Inner
City Press
asked Ja'afari if he thought the push to have this debate in the
Security Council was related to the stalled
draft resolution on the
crackdown in Syria. Video here.
Ja'afari
said yes,
it is an “orchestrated campaign against my country... They try to
mobilize all agencies against Syria.” He spoke on (BlackBerry)
camera about the European draft resolution, the attempt to put
language about the crackdown into the UNDOF resolution (click here
for Inner City Press' story on that)
and to this “nucear” issues,
adding, “they are so polite, they call it implementation of the
safeguard agreement.”
Inner
City Press
asked him, “What's the next move?”
Ja'afari
answered,
“biological or chemical.” Video here. And
then he was gone.
UNDOF exercises: on fire, Dair
Alzour not shown
While
Araud
refused to speak or answer question, UK Ambassador Mark Lyall Grant
spoke to the media. Here is the transcript:
UK
Ambassador
and Permanent Representative Sir Mark Lyall Grant speaking
with reporters on the Security Council Meeting on the IAEA report on
Syria nuclear facility, 14 July 2011
A
few
words about the Security Council this afternoon. It was clearly
important that the Security Council did discuss the IAEA report as a
result of the Board of Governors decision to submit their findings to
the Security Council today. It was important because we must uphold
the credibility and integrity of the Safeguards regime and the work
of the IAEA and the proliferation treaty more generally.
We
heard
today a devastating briefing from the Safeguards team of the
IAEA from which you could only draw one conclusion: That Syria did
have at Dair Alzour, a clandestine nuclear plant, that they tried to
conceal the purpose of that plant, that they mislead the IAEA about
what the purpose was and they have failed to cooperate effectively
with the IAEA in following up the questions that the IAEA put to them
about the plant. Therefore, we expect that the Security Council will
want to come back to this issue. Syria wrote a letter on the 26th of
May to say that it would now cooperate with the IAEA, but the IAEA
confirmed that since then there has been no change and there has not
been any better cooperation after the letter was written than there
was before, and therefore a number of members have said that they
would want to be kept informed of whether that cooperation did in
fact improve.
Q:
Purpose
of facility and when SC said it wanted to come back, what
more specifically did that mean?
A:
Well
as I say, I think that Syria has said that it will now
cooperate, they said today that there had been no change in the two
months since that letter had been written, but that we wanted to be
kept informed so when there is a future report to the IAEA, that will
come back to the Security Council. I can’t be more specific than
that in terms of the timing or how that will come about. In terms of
the technical report, I can’t go into details but the clear
technical evidence, the very detailed slide show with satellite
photographs making it very clear why the IAEA reached the conclusion
it did about the purpose of this...
Q:
Timing
because SC has failed to agree on doing something about the
political...
A:
No,
those who spoke made very clear that the two things are distinct.
What we’re talking about here is a clandestine nuclear programme in
Syria that has being going for many years. It’s not linked to the
current…
Q:
Israel
bombing something...? Anybody looked into that? That is a
piece of a problem?
A:
The purpose of today’s debate was about the IAEA report which was
on the origins and purpose of the site, not how the site was
destroyed.
Q:
Same
resistance from Russians and Chinese on the nuclear issue as on
the political issue in briefing today? What would be the catalyst to
bring back to the Council?
A:
A
number of Member States argued that the IAEA report had not come to
any definitive conclusions that the fact that the site had been
destroyed was what made it difficult to come to that definitive
solutions and therefore did not think it was appropriate for the
Security Council to discuss the issue, but the fact is that the
Security Council did discuss the issue today and a number of Member
States said that they would want to be kept informed so that they
could discuss it again if there was not better cooperation from the
Syrians authorities in the future.
Q:
Meeting
without product / result? Not clear about catalyst?
A:
No.
We did not try to get a product from this meeting. It’s no
secret that the Security Council is divided on a number of issues to
do with Syria and it is clearly divided on this issue. We saw that in
the vote of the Board of Governors. There were a number of members
of the Security Council who were also on the Board of Governors on
the IAEA who voted against the resolution, there were others who
abstained and their position has not changed since the timing of that
Board of Governors meeting in Vienna.
* * *
On
Syria,
UNDOF Vote Delayed, Russia's Blue Text Blended With US, France
& UK Want Reference to Unrest
By
Matthew
Russell
Lee
UNITED
NATIONS,
June
28, updated -- The
Security Council's resolution on the UN Disengagement Observer Force
UNDOF, initially scheduled to be adopted June 28, has been
delayed amid whether and how to reflect recent events in Syria.
A
special
consulation on the UNDOF resolution began June 28 at 11 am, with a
slew of Deputy Permanent Representatives including France's, South
Africa's, Bosnia's and Russia's Pankin rushing in.
When
Russia said
late on June 23 that they had put their version of the resolution on
the UN mission UNDOF “into blue,” some other Security Council
members disagreed.
A full 24
hours later, a Western Council member
told Inner City Press that Russia hadn't really put a text into blue,
just the “idea of what the Secretariat would have proposed.”
This
Western
member predicted that after the June 27 consultations on the American
draft, when UNDOF came up for a vote then scheduled for June 28, there
would be a procedural vote on Russia's, to declare it not blue,
not the first.
But
an expert in
Council procedure consulted by Inner City Press disagreed. What
Russia did was within the definition of being “in blue,” the
expert said and predicted that Russia's draft would have to be voted
on first.
While
some
questioned Russia's tactic, other defended it as adhering to
tradition in terms of “substance if not form.”
On
June 27,
Russia's Deputy Permanent Representative Pankin told Inner City
Press, “Our text is on the table.” He said that a June 28 vote
was possible, but that it did not need to be done before the end of
the month.
On
June 28 it
emerged that UNDOF would not be voted on that morning. Instead, a
round of consultations with DPRs was held.
Back
on June 24,
the Security Council adopted a press statement on Yemen, expressing
concern at violence and welcoming the GCC mediation. On Syria, a
press statement was blocked by Lebanon, as a presidential statement
may now be. The composition of the Council has its effect. Watch this
site.
Footnote: meanwhile
Inner City Press has his morning published a letter to the editor about
Syria strategy from US Under-Secretary for State Judith McHale, click here to
view.
Update of 11:35 am
-- it's said that the Russian and US texts are blending, with reference
to what has happened in UNDOF's Golan Heights area, but others --
"France and the UK," a source tells Inner City Press -- want to refer
to "broader Syria."
Update of 12:35 pm
-- the argument is that unrest elsewhere in Syria has spread into the
UNDOF zone, and that the ceasefire there is being undermined.
Consultations continue on the "blended" text.
, 
