By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, May 27 -- The Security Council president Gerard Araud showed up at the stakeout at 7:40 pm on Friday night, more than nine hours after it was announced he would read a Council Press Statement on the arrest of Ratko Mladic.
“Three for the price of one,” Araud told the Press, before reading out statements on an attack on UN peacekeepers in Lebanon and the arrest of Mladic, and a separate “elements to the press” on the arrest of Rwanda genocide suspect Bernard Munyagishari in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
After Araud finished reading, Inner City Press asked him to explain the ten hour delay on the Mladic statement.
Sources say there was resistance to including a reference to Srebrenica in the statement -- one wag noted that the UN itself might be embarrassed to have it in, given the charges against peacekeepers in that case.
Araud said he would not as President of the Council describe any negotiations.
Inner City Press asked him about the draft resolution on Syria, whether he thought it possible it could be voted on during France's presidency, which ends Tuesday.
No, Araud said, we are not ready, we are not close. Later he went further: less promising. And so it goes at the UN.
