By Matthew Russell Lee, Exclusive
UNITED NATIONS, August 3 -- On Syria a series of compromises in the UN Security Council led to a Presidential Statement, not resolution, slated forpossible adoption at 3 pm on Wednesday.
Inner City Press has obtained the final draft, and puts it online here.
At 12:45, Hardeep Singh Puri, the Council's president for August, told Inner City Press that the silence procedure on the draft had been extended from 1 to 2:30. He called adoption "doable."
The European members had proposed a resolution, but settled for a Presidential Statement. Russian Permanent Representative Vitaly Churkin told the press that this so-called PRST was a format more appropriate for the situation of Syria.
Brazil, operating on the principles of its IBSA grouping with India and South Africa, had on Tuesday proposed a text which condemned violence against security forces. As UK Permanent Representative Mark Lyall Grant explained to the Press, the only remaining reference in this direction is a call to end violence by all sides and against "reprisals against state institutions."
The so-called blended text by the UK and Brazil had called for an investigation of human rights violations. This has been removed, Churkin said, adding that it was not a Russia's request.
Inner City Press asked the UK's Mark Lyall Grant about it. He said it came out at the request of "one member... not Russia or China." He declined, at least on the record, to identify which country demanded it come out.
Inner City Press asked Hardeep Singh Puri which country asked for it to come out. It's more complex, he said. The question was who would conduct the investigation. If you say the Syrian authorities are committing the violations, how can they investigate themselves?
A Presidential Statement is said to require 15-0 unanimity: that is, the concordance of Lebanon, which blocked the first proposed Council statement on Syria. Wednesday there was talk of precedents to get around this, talk of China disassociating itself from decision on the demarcation of the Iraq - Kuwait border, and of a UN disassociation "in another way."
Council members were given until 1 pm -- now 2:30 -- to break silence, and if not, to come to a formal meeting at 3 to adopt it. Watch this site.
