Major Dvpt. in the world of Diplomatic affairs: India grows spine, US stages walkout
Major Development in the world of Diplomatic affairs: India grows a spine, US stages walkout - first in the history of the UNSC.
Are we beginning to see the beginnings of US diplomatic isolation?
Ibsa (India, Brazil and South Africa) shake UN power pillars
By K.P. Nayar | The Telegraph - Calcutta – 3 hours ago.
New York, Oct. 5: India, Brazil and South Africa (Ibsa), the world's emerging pole of Third World democracies, yesterday broke the vice-like grip of the big powers on the UN Security Council, even if temporarily.
The chain of events also prompted the first-ever walkout in the UN's history by a Council member ' the United States of America ' even as the West failed to get a hard line resolution on Syria passed by the 15-member body.
A day of dramatic developments at the Security Council's famous horse-shoe table was preceded by hours of intense backroom consultations during which Europeans cajoled Ibsa ambassadors to vote for what would have been the first resolution against the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad since protests against his rule began in March.
India, Brazil and South Africa, along with Lebanon, abstained. India's permanent representative to the UN, Hardeep Singh Puri, regretted that the resolution, which died on the Council floor when it attracted a double veto from Russia and China, did not address a variety of New Delhi's concerns.
"It does not condemn the violence perpetrated by the Syrian Opposition. Nor does it place any responsibility on the Opposition to abjure violence and engage with the Syrian authorities for redressal of their grievances through a peaceful political process"¦. The resolution under the Council's consideration does not accommodate our concern about threat of sanctions," Puri told the Council in an explanation of India's vote.
The resolution has been in the making for five months with no meeting ground between the western powers which are seeking Iraq-Libya-style regime change in Damascus and others like Russia, China and the Ibsa countries advocating moderation.
When India assumed presidency of the Security Council in August, Puri managed to reconcile differences within the Council for a while and in a show of unity issued a "presidential statement" which appeared to remove an imminent threat of war in Syria that the western powers were itching for.
Simultaneously, an Ibsa delegation which included Dilip Sinha, additional secretary for international organisations in the ministry of external affairs, visited Damascus and extracted a personal commitment from President Assad that he would initiate political reforms.
Yesterday's resolution represented a fresh attempt by the Europeans and the US to sneakily obtain Security Council approval to go along the road to replace the Assad government using the same tactics they employed in Libya.
Russia and China have been vigilant against repeating the mistake they made earlier this year in the name of unity in the Security Council by agreeing on a Libya resolution which was subsequently misused by the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) to overthrow Muammar Gaddafi. The Ibsa countries were also on their guard against the western scheme.
The western strategy this time was to get the Ibsa countries to support the resolution co-sponsored by France, Germany, Portugal and Britain. The co-sponsors repeatedly watered down the text of their draft in the hope that Ibsa's support would be forthcoming.
An earlier European draft called for an arms embargo and similar measures, but a watered down version went as far as to remove any direct references to "sanctions". However, the final text of the resolution said the Security Council would review within 30 days how far Damascus had implemented UN demands. It would then "consider its options, including measures under Article 41 of the Charter of the United Nations".
The Ibsa countries objected to any reference to Article 41 which would have allowed the West to later use non-military means against Syria, including economic and diplomatic sanctions. As in the case of the Libya resolution, there were fears on the Council floor that a smokescreen for further action by misusing a provision in the resolution to consider "other options" against Syria was being created by its passage.
The western hope was that if the Ibsa countries could be persuaded to support their final draft, then Russia and China ' which exercised their veto yesterday ' could be completely isolated in the Security Council or even shamed into at least abstaining in the name of unity within the Council. That would have enabled the passage of the resolution.
Yesterday's vote saw two permanent members of the Council co-sponsoring a resolution and two others vetoing it while yet another of the big powers staged a walkout.
In recent years, the Big Five have almost always voted as a bloc ' except on Israel ' and have controlled the Council, reflecting its archaic structure created following World War II.
For Ibsa countries and other like-minded UN members, this has been an unacceptable predicament where the big powers pre-determine the way the world is ordered and then get the Security Council to rubber stamp their prescriptions. But New Delhi or Brasilia has been helpless in the matter.
Yesterday's rare division among the five permanent members was a small victory for Ibsa, which stood together and took a common decision to abstain. They decided not to vote against the resolution along with Russia and China because India, Brazil and South Africa, all democracies, did not want to be seen as condoning Assad's crackdown against a movement for political change.
They also felt that the government in Damascus had not moved fast enough on the promises Assad made to the Ibsa delegation to initiate political reforms and abjure violence against demonstrators.
The US delegation, led by its permanent representative, Susan Rice, walked out when her Syrian counterpart accused Washington of being a "party to genocide" by Israel and yet using its veto 50 times to protect Tel Aviv.
There was subdued amusement at the horse-shoe table when the British permanent representative, Mark Lyall Grant, continued to attend the Council proceedings for a while and then followed the Americans. Britain has often been accused of being America's poodle.
The walkout by the US delegation was the first by any country in the history of the Security Council. During the early phases of the Cold War, the Soviet Union used to boycott Security Council proceedings to hide its isolation, but never walked out.
During the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, Kigali was on the Security Council, but it, too, never walked out. Like the Soviets, they simply stayed away from the Council when it discussed the genocide.
Rice could have exercised her right to reply to the Syrians instead of walking out, but some Council members were of the view that the US did not really have any answers to the charge that having vetoed resolutions on Israel, Washington was hardly in a position to criticise Ibsa abstentions or the Sino-Russian veto.
India and allies shake UN power pillars - Yahoo!