By Matthew Russell Lee (Inner City Press),
Last month, Eritrea asked the UN Security Council to meet with it, and on Tuesday the meeting was granted. Also present, however, were representatives from Ethiopia, Somalia, Kenya and Uganda, who “attacked Eritrea” as one Permanent Representative leaving the meeting told Inner City Press.
The Council wanted the meeting to be closed to the press and the public, but cannot invite non Council members into its consultations. So it was called an interactive dialogue and was held not in the Council chambers but on the second floor of the UN’s temporary North Lawn building.
Chinese Deputy Permanent Representative Wang shook his head and told Inner City Press “he did not think the Council could solve this problem.”
In the middle of the meeting, French Ambassador Gerard Araud, emerged to buy a pastry and stood eating it while studying a three dimensional carving of the 1269 B.C. treaty of Hattusilis and Ramses II, given to the UN by Turkey in 1970. Next to him was a stone carving given to the UN by Syria, a topic he’s said to have raised in the Council’s consultations on July 18.
Passing to reporters, Ambassador Araud hissed about the meeting as saying, “They are not kissing to each other.”
Another Permanent Representative bemoaned the format that developed for the meeting, saying that further “Eritrea bashing is not productive.”
Another added, of Eritrea, “they are isolated in their neighborhood, their neighbors do not like their foreign policy including in Somalia.”
Inside the meeting, Eritrea was emphasizing that while it had won a court decision on Badme and other land belongs to it and not Ethiopia, the decision has not been implemented. One Council member said that additional sanctions may be imposed on Eritrea.
This seems like a spiral: where will it end? (Source)
