U.S. ambassador not satisfied with response to complaint that U.N. used Palestinian map that ignored Israel 

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By Edith M. Lederer
January 19, 2006
Combined Jewish Philanthropies
Original Source: http://www.cjp.org/content_display.html?ArticleID=173298


UNITED NATIONS - U.S. Ambassador John Bolton complained that the United Nations used a map of Palestine at a commemoration which ignored the state of Israel - and he said he's not satisfied with the U.N. explanation. 
Bolton sent a letter to Secretary-General Kofi Annan protesting that the use of the 1948 map at the U.N.'s observance of the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People on Nov. 29 could be misconstrued to suggest that the United Nations tacitly supports the abolition of the state of Israel. 
In the Jan. 3 letter, Bolton said the issue has even greater salience since Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called in October for the state of Israel to be wiped off the map. 
Undersecretary-General Ibrahim Gambari said in a reply released Wednesday that the decision to display the map was made by the General Assembly's Committee on the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People in 1981 and the practice of doing this during the annual observance has remained unchanged ever since. 
Gambari, who is in charge of political affairs, noted that the secretary-general customarily makes a statement at the obervance, and in 2004 Bolton's predecessor, U.S. Ambassador John Danforth, also spoke in his capacity as president of the U.N. Security Council. 
Nonetheless, he said, the secretary-general is concerned at the unfortunate impression that displaying the flag could give - namely that the United Nations favors the replacement of Israel by a single Palestinian state. 
The reality is that Annan, the General Assembly and the Security Council have repeatedly called for an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel so both peoples can live side by side in peace, he said. 
Clearly, as you rightly point out, the display of the 1948 map has acquired a new and very troubling connotation in the light of the remarks made recently by the president of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Gambari said. The secretary-general has made clear his strong disapproval of such remarks - and he hopes that the Member States' Committee on the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People will consider deciding not to display the 1948 map in future. 
Gambari said he met the committee's chairman, Senegal's Ambassador Paul Badji and was encouraged by his commitment to address the matter in a manner, which I believe will be acceptable to you. He gave no details but suggested Bolton might want to discuss the issue with Badji. 
Bolton told reporters Wednesday that the fundamental issue here is the treatment of a member state of the United Nations and I don't detect that we have an answer to that fundamental problem yet. 
The issue is, how is it possible that this type of behavior persists of denying the existence of a member state of the United Nations? That's the issue for me, not what happened on any one day, he said. 
I have viewed the map question as a potential pivot point to change this anti-Israel culture, Bolton said. 
The United Nations was created in the wake of World War II, when Europe's Jews were nearly wiped out by Nazi Germany. It voted soon after, in 1947, to carve out two countries in Palestine, one Jewish, the other Arab, but the Palestinians' share was lost in the 1948 Mideast war with parts divvied up among Israel, Jordan and Egypt. 
After the 1967 and 1973 Mideast wars, Israel started coming under concerted attack in the United Nations from a coalition of developing countries in the Middle East, Africa and Asia. 
In 1975, the General Assembly voted to equate Zionism with racism, a move that was repealed in the 1990s. But Annan has said deep and painful scars remain for both sides. 
Annan has visited Israel and pressed for the country to join a region group, which means it can seek membership on U.N. bodies. In June, Israel was elected as one of 21 vice-presidents for the current General Assembly session, in what the Jewish state called a historic move toward its full representation on key U.N. bodies.