At UN's Meeting on Jerusalem, Russian Gambit Leaves Libya Standing Alone, U.S. With Buyer's Remorse?
By Matthew Russell Lee
March 6, 2008
The Inner City Press
Original Source: http://www.innercitypress.com/un1jerusalem030608.html
UNITED NATIONS, March 6 -- The Security Council's emergency meeting Thursday night in the wake of the killing of eight students in a Jerusalem religious school broke up after an hour, with Israel's Ambassador Dan Gillerman calling Libya a terrorist state that should not even be a member of the United Nations. Libya's representative Ibrahim Dabbashi returned the invective, saying Libya needs no certificate of good conduct from the Israeli terrorist regime. He said that four or five countries also asked for condemnation of the killing of innocents in Gaza. 
   Inner City Press asked him to name these five countries, or even four or three. He declined, saying we don't have to disclose. Inner City Press followed up with several Council diplomats, who sketched a process in which three members joined Libya in asking that Gaza be included in the American-drafted press statement. But after Russia's Vitaly Churkin, president of the Council for March, proposed a formula in which the loss of all civilian life in the overall conflict would be condemned, followed by the specific incident in Jerusalem, Libya was the only one to speak in opposition. After the break, a diplomat told Inner City Press, there was only the U.S. putting Libya on the spot to support. And Libya refused.
            In this scenario, both statements could technically be true: Israel's and the U.S.'s statement that only Libya -- after Amb. Churkin's formulation -- opposed condemning the Jerusalem attack, and Libya's statement that four (or at least three) countries joined in it urging that Gaza be included, before the Churkin gambit, that is.

Libya's representative at the UN: certificate of good conduct not shown
News analysis: does the U.S. have buyer's remorse about not opposing Libya's election to the Security Council? Given Libya's recent face-offs with the U.S. about Gaza and Israel -- but not Iran -- one might think, yes. But according to a theory spun to Inner  City Press by one cynical wag, some in the U.S. administration like to see the  U.N. and Security Council weak and ineffectual. Libya has twice now been outflanked and left to be standing alone. A pattern is emerging.
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