By Matthew Russell Lee, News Analysis
UNITED NATIONS, July 7 -- As the UN's Libya Sanctions committee began meeting Thursday afternoon about France's admitted dropping of weapons into Libya's Nafusa Mountains, even the level of Security Council members' representation spoke volumes.
Russia and South Africa, two of the countries which requested the meeting on the question of whether France's action violated the arms embargo in Resolution 1970, each sent their Deputy Permanent Representative.
France, it was said, treated the meeting with disdain. A French ally said it should only be “for the experts,” meaning a level lower than DPR, despite the importance of the topic.
The problem, it seems clear, is that while the Security Council enacts arms embargoes and sanctions, its sanctions committee operate only by consensus. In practice this means that UN arms embargoes apply to all of the UN's 192 members EXCEPT those on the Security Council.
But as one of the DPRs attending on Thursday told Inner City Press, once Permanent members like France start “thumbing their nose” at arms embargoes -- or at a minimum, not seeking prior approval for acts that others who passed the embargo view as potentially violative -- they should not be surprised when others break embargoes, or ignore arrest warrants or the like.
