By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, June 3, updated -- Seventy hours after the US introduced a draft Presidential Statement on Abyei, Sudan's Ambassador Daffa-Alla Elhag Ali Osman walked into the Security Council in a bright white suit. Already a Council Deputy Permanent Representative had told Inner City Press that more work was needed on the Statement, to begin at 1 pm on Friday.
As Sudan's Ambassador walked out of the Council, Inner City Press asked him about the draft. He said it had been inaccurate to call Sudan's tanks in Abyei an occupation. (Inner City Press is told that this word is being removed). He took issue with the phrase that the influx of Miseriya was an attempt at ethnic cleansing.
“That is prejudging,” he said. “Let it happen, genocide or ethnic cleansing, and then talk about it.”
When Inner City Press asked him about the accusation that tons of food was stolen in Abyei, he said he hadn't seen the World Food Program see that. Asked by another journalist about the burning of houses, he said, “those are huts, these things happen in war. Where are you from - Lebanon? These things happen there.”
And then he was gone, at least until 1 pm.
Update of 11:40 am -- a Deputy Permanent Representative tells Inner City Press that the meeting on the Sudan PRST has been moved up from 1 until just after the consultations on UNOCA, as early as noon. What else will come out of the draft? Watch this site.
Update of 12:30 pm -- Inner City Press is told that if the Council finally reaches agreement on this PRST, it will be adopted by being read out in the Chamber at 4 pm...
Update of 1:19 pm -- after a Deputy Permanent Representative tells Inner City Press that the Sudan PRST is “definitely” going to be adopted at 4 pm, another source explains to Inner City Press that there is only one paragraph open, in which the US wants to require new meetings on the topic every seven days, other members don't. Eminently solvable.
Update of 2:26 pm -- while another Deputy Permanent Representative tells Inner City Press that the Council has agreed to hold another meeting on Sudan next week, says they have still not agreed on how to express it in language and “put it on paper.” A Western representative asks Inner City Press, if we put it out at 4, the news can still be distributed, right? But of course...
Update of 2:51 pm -- the Political Coordinators have just left the Council, a number of them telling Inner City Press that the agreement, to be typed up by the US and translated into French in which Gabon will read it out, is to remain seized of the matter and to calendar another meeting on Sudan for June 10... Timing of adoption now depends on US typing up, and translation...
Update of 4:32 pm -- while the players have arrived for adoption of the Sudan PRST at the Security Council, still the meeting hasn't started. Meanwhile, reports of a UN leak saying it WAS ethnic cleansing in Abyei, here
Update of 4:39 pm -- a Deputy Permanent Representative tells Inner City Press, “the French translation is not ready.”
