By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, December 16 -- Amid word of US Secretary of State John Kerry returning to Palestine to speak with Mahmood Abbas, at the UN on Monday a six month long conflict between the US and Palestine and its supporters over language was resolved.
As ECOSOC President Nestor Osorio of Colombia explained to Inner City Press, an explicit reference to the right of self determination was removed from a text but remained implicitly, with a citation to a previous documents containing it. Osorio also said the magic words in the nature of an explanation of what was being adopted.
More concretely on the Israel - Palestine negotiation, Inner City Press was briefed Monday by a well placed source on what Palestine could accept, in terms of security arrangements: no Israel, but yes to a third party like NATO.
Meanwhile in the Security Council on Libya, NATO's role was again a subject of dispute. Inner City Press asked UK Ambassador Mark Lyall Grant if disagreements in the Council about whether the NATO action on the country was a success or failure continued to echo inside. Lyall Grant indicated that disagreements continue.
This became clear minutes later, when a decidedly non-Western diplomat approached Inner City Press and said, about Libya, "France, the UK and US (you know the acronym) created the militias, let them deal with the problem."
The diplomat added, "they caused the problem with two resolutions, now they issue a Presidential Statement telling the Libyan authorities to clean up the mess." Yes, disagreements continue. But we felt a need to report it -- a dispute about language, between the US, Palestine and its supporters, was resolved Monday after six months. Watch this site.
