By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, March 6, updated March 7 -- With Yemen the topic for the UN Security Council on March 7, some wonder why there's been not move by the Council to issue a statement about the killing of nearly 200 Yemeni soldiers in South Yemen in recent days.
"The Council speaks about five deaths," a well placed diplomat marveled to Inner City Press on Tuesday night. "Even about a planned attack that killed no one. Now two hundred deaths are being ignored?"
But no one ever said that the Council is consistent. The source went on to analyze that one reason explained the Security Council's silence: it's most powerful member.
"What is Obama running on?" the UN source asked rhetorically. "On killing Osama bin Laden, on supposedly beating down Al Qaeda. Except Al Qaeda as actually growing now in Yemen, after the immunity deal for Saleh that Obama supported.
Now Al Qaeda thinks they can take over Aden, they think the government is weak and they are right. But nothing will be said until November."
Ali Saleh came to New York, ostensibly for medical treatment. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon told Inner City Press, when asked, that he hadn't really raised to Saleh the issues of accountability and impunity.
The same Gulf Cooperations Council countries now talking of sending Syria's Assad to the International Criminal Court signed off on an impunity deal with Ali Saleh. Even Qatar which ostensibly distanced itself from the GCC's impunity deal has just hosted ICC indicted Omar al Bashir. Hypocrisy? Politics? What else, at the UN? Watch this site.
