By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, May 16 -- Into an otherwise quiet UN Security Council on Wednesday afternoon a series of Arab ambassadors filed: Ibrahim Dabbashi of Libya, Nawaf Salam of Lebanon and finally the Arab Group's Council member for now, Morocco's Ambassador Loulichki.
He stopped and told Inner City Press this was the "troika," past, present and future. They went into talk Palestine and Jerusalem with the Council president for May, Kodjo Menan of Togo.
An hour or so later when Menan came out, he told Inner City Press that yes it was Jerusalem, and that he would tell the other Security Council members what he had heard "tomorrow," meaning May 16.
The Council is set to have closed door meetings about North Korea and Sudan sanctions; Jerusalem will apparently be raised under Any Other Business.
The same troika group, it emerges, met the day previous with UN Deputy Secretary General Jan Eliasson. What is the goal of these meetings? Riyad Mansour of the Observer State of Palestine wrote identical letters to Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and to Menan as Council president. Then the troika went to follow up.
Is this, at least the meeting with Eliasson, meant to ensure inclusion of the issue in the next report of the Secretary General? Is there any chance of Security Council action? And was UN Department of Political Affairs chief Jeffrey Feltman involved in all this? Watch this site.
