Posted on May 10th, 2012 by Marian Houk
Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas visited the Ramallah / Al-Bireh solidarity tents on Thursday afternoon. It was a rare public outing for a man who travels around Ramallah in a 14-car convoy [including an ambulance] on streets where all traffic has to be stopped, and where armed men stand watch at regular intervals all along the [...]
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Filed under: BAN Ki-Moon, Human Rights, Israel, Palestine & Palestinians, UN Secretary-General
Posted on April 15th, 2012 by Marian Houk
The UN Security Council met with relative efficiency on Saturday afternoon at UNHQ/NY and voted unanimously [15-0] to send an advance team of some 30 unarmed military observers to Syria, as an advance team of monitors to observe compliance with a six-point plan by “Joint Envoy” Kofi Annan to stop the violence that has killed [...]
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Filed under: Ambassadors and other diplomats, Human Rights, Kofi Annan, Syria, UN Secretary-General, UN Security Council
Posted on February 1st, 2012 by Marian Houk
UN Secretary-General BAN Ki-Moon met Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem today, then Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah. After both meetings, there was a press conference. In Jerusalem with Netanyahu, BAN said “Settlements do not help the peace process… I told the prime minister that he should refrain from future construction”. [Just future construction? [...]
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Filed under: BAN Ki-Moon, Boundaries & Borders, Israel, Palestine & Palestinians, UN Secretary-General, UN Security Council, United Nations
Posted on September 24th, 2011 by Marian Houk
Mahmoud Abbas got a second series of standing ovations — a week after he told his people from Ramallah on 16 September that he was going to ask the UN Security Council for full UN membership for the State of Palestine — on 23 September, when he addressed the UN General Assembly in New York. [...]
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Filed under: Israel, Palestine & Palestinians, UN General Assembly, UN Secretary-General, UN Security Council
Posted on September 22nd, 2011 by Marian Houk
U.S. President Barack Obama, in his annual address to the UN General Assembly, said Wednesday that “Palestinians deserve to know the territorial basis of their state”. As if they don’t know. Or — as if someone else should tell them. Since their 1988 Declaration of Independence, the Palestinian National Council agreed to form their state [...]
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Filed under: French, Israel, Palestine & Palestinians, UN General Assembly, UN Secretary-General, UN Security Council, United Nations
Posted on September 16th, 2011 by Marian Houk
In this Al-Jazeera International interview with a nicely designed set — possibly in the UNSG’s 38th floor office, it seems — UNSG BAN Ki-Moon speaks with Al Jazeera’s Kristen Saloomey, and says: “Membership in UN is something that is up to the member states of the UN … It does not fall within my mandate [...]
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Filed under: BAN Ki-Moon, Palestine & Palestinians, UN Secretary-General, United Nations
Posted on September 1st, 2011 by Marian Houk
The New York Times has posted a leaked, advance copy of the “Final” Report commissioned by the UN Secretary-General on how to avoid a repetition of the mayhem and deaths that occurred during the Israeli naval interception on the high seas of a Freedom Flotilla aiming to break the Israeli siege on Gaza. During the [...]
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Filed under: Boundaries & Borders, Gaza, Human Rights, International Law, Israel, Sanctions, Turkey, UN Secretary-General
Posted on July 19th, 2011 by Marian Houk
Özdem Sanberk, described as “one of Turkey’s most experienced diplomats”, said in an interview published in Turkey on Monday that his government does not agree with all of the still-unpublished conclusions in a 90-page report of a panel appointed by the UN Secretary General to look into the forceful Israeli interception of the Mavi Marmara [...]
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Filed under: Ambassadors and other diplomats, Boundaries & Borders, Gaza, International Law, Israel, Palestine & Palestinians, Turkey, UN Secretary-General
Posted on June 17th, 2011 by Marian Houk
The UN Secretary-General’s new report raises more questions than answers about two protests that turned deadly in the Golan Heights in the past month in which people who the UN report identified as “civilians”, and “largely young unarmed Palestinians” overran Syrian, UN, and Israeli lines — in an attempt to enter an area under Israeli [...]
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Filed under: Boundaries & Borders, International Committee of the Red Cross - ICRC, Israel, Landmines, Palestine & Palestinians, Syria, UN Peacekeeping, UN Secretary-General
Posted on March 18th, 2011 by Marian Houk
The UN Security Council acted overnight to authorize — some say, belatedly — international action to protection of civilians and areas of civilian population that are under threat of attack in Libya, by adopting UNSC Resolution 1973. It began by calling for an immediate cease-fire. The text explicitly mentions Benghazi, which is was under imminent [...]
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Filed under: Human Rights, Libya, UN Secretary-General, UN Security Council
