By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, November 17 -- As French Ambassador Gerard Araud entered the Security Council meeting his government called on Saturday not on Gaza but in support of a push back against the M23 mutineers by the DR Congo army assisted by UN "Peacekeeping," he said a solution requires an agreement between the DRC and Rwanda.
"We are not snitches," he claimed, but in the "real world" there is "no solution without an agreement between the DRC and its neighbors including Rwanda."
Rwanda was elected in October to take over a Security Council seat on January 1. Under the Council's precedents, it should be able to attend closed door consultations from today onward. Inner City Press witnessed a Rwandan diplomat entering the Council just before 3 pm.
Outside there were many questions why the meeting was not about Gaza. Morocco's Ambassador Loulichki confirmed what Palestine's Mansour told Inner City Press late Friday, that there would be a meeting of Arab Ambassadors.
It will be at 4 pm, and Loulichki said if the Arab League foreign minister want an urgent Security Council meeting, he will ask for it.
It seems clear that the majority of Security Council and certainly General Assembly members would like a statement urging Israel to stop, just as a draft French statement would tell the M23 mutineers to stop in the DRC.
A cynic or tactician might say, link the two together: a DRC statement as well as a Gaza statement. Could be, but very probably won't. Watch this site.
