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| UN envoy sticks to Israel 'poison' remark |
| 2004-04-25 |
| United Nations special envoy to Iraq Lakhdar Brahimi's statement that Israeli policies were "poisoning" the Middle East is "very disturbing," deputy permanent representative to the UN Ambassador Arye Mekel said on Friday. Mekel said that the mission was considering its response to the UN envoy's comments on a French radio station. "We believe that UN officials should be objective, and in fact when we complain about the automatic anti-Israeli majority, they always tell us that we must distinguish between that and the fair treatment [accorded to Israel] by UN officials," Mekel said. Brahimi's statement, Mekel noted, contradicts public and private statements made by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who has praised Israel's proposed disengagement plan from Gaza. The UN's Middle East envoy, Terje Roed-Larsen, was also slated to laud the prospective pullout, and Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's leadership on the issue, at a Security Council briefing Friday morning. "We are considering what measures to take in reaction to this statement, which we find very disturbing," Mekel said. In an interview with a French radio station, Lakhdar Brahimi, United Nations special envoy to Iraq, said that "The problems [Iraq and Israel-Palestinians] are connected. There is no doubt that the great poison in the region is this Israeli policy of domination and the suffering imposed on the Palestinians, as well as the perception of the body of the population in the region and beyond of the injustice of this policy and the equally-unjust support of the UN for this policy." Brahimi stressed that there is a clear connection between the situation in Iraq and Israel's policy." |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #1 Lakhdar Brahimi, UN special envoy to Iraq, is yet another 'diplomat' who got his start in a terrorist organization. In his case it was the FLN in Algeria, which was a user of the tactic of labelling political rivals as 'collaborators' (with the French in that case) before murdering them. Sorta like Hamas and Hezbollah and the PLO and the dear little 'insurgents' now in Iraq. |
| Posted by: Insufficiently Sensitive 2004-04-25 8:23:20 PM |