Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at UN
www.innercitypress.com/un4238muse042308.html
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.
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.
And see, www.innercitypress.com/un4238muse042308.html
