By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, February 13 -- Amid General Assembly speeches for and mostly against Bashar al Assad of Syria on Monday afternoon, the real question was when the new GA draft resolution would be circulated and what it would say. Inner City Press asked UK Permanent Representative Mark Lyall Grant about the draft. "Ask the Saudis," he said.
Others told Inner City Press that "the Arabs" would meet at 5 pm on Friday and then decide how to proceed. Syrian Ambassadar Bashar Ja'afari told Inner City Press, they are in disarray, they are adding and subtracting, "waiting to hear from their masters." But where was the draft?
Inside the GA chamber, speakers in defense of Assad included Nicaragua, North Korea, Belarus and Iran, whose Permanent Representative told Inner City Press that because he is on the GA's General Committee, he notice that the Syria agenda item hadn't been put through there.
Some others, even anti Assad, said they were surprised at how the Qatari President of the General Assembly had proceeded. "If we're saying Assad violates international law," one said, "we should be careful to follow the procedures." Nietzschean, somehow.
There were other highbrow references, with Nicaragua for example saying the NATO wants hegemony, a world not much heard in the UN anymore. Israel's Ambassador Prosor riffed that Assad may have been trained as an eye doctor, but not he's trying to blind the international community.
Ja'afari fired back, continuing in the eye meme, about Israel shedding crocodile tears. Still what was most lacking at the GA session ended was a draft on which to vote. Watch this site.
