Former UNSG Kofi Annan, who is now the joint envoy of the UN and the Arab League with a mandate to end the violence in Syria, is readying a recommendation that will be delivered to the UN Security Council in New York later today to establish a 250-observer force that will also have its own [...]
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Filed under: Kofi Annan, Syria, UN Security Council
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
In advance of important talks with Iran about its nuclear program on 13 [or 14?] April [apparently in Istanbul, after all] Israeli Maj-Gen (res) Amos Gilad said in a briefing in Jerusalem this week that Iran, today, has ability to put together a nuclear weapon [but probably won't]. Iran does “have the know-how to assemble [...]
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Filed under: Iran, Israel, Negotiators and negotiations, Nuclear technology and weapons, Palestine & Palestinians, UN Security Council, USA
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
The IAEA has passed what appears to be a mild resolution in response to its toughest report yet about Iran’s nuclear program. The IAEA report suggested that there was no way to understand parts of Iran’s nuclear research other than to believe there was an aim to study how a nuclear weapon might be developed. [...]
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Filed under: International Atomic Energy Agency - IAEA, Iran, Nuclear technology and weapons, UN General Assembly, UN Security Council, US in UN
The latest and much-anticipated IAEA report on Iran was distributed to members of the Board of Governors in Vienna — and almost immediately leaked to the press. What does it say? It can be read in full here: here. It starts right out with this statement, rebuffing Iran’s efforts to negotiate or wheedle an arrangement [...]
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Filed under: International Atomic Energy Agency - IAEA, Iran, Nuclear technology and weapons, UN Security Council
Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu has been saying that he is ready to return to negotiations — without preconditions — at any time. He suggested meeting Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the UN, right after his speech yesterday. The Palestinians say that there has to be a complete stop to Israeli settlement activities on the [...]
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Filed under: Israel, Palestine & Palestinians, Quartet, UN Security Council, United Nations
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
It took the American administration several years to denounce the obvious stalling tactics of Israel’s then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir after the launch of the Madrid Peace Conference in October 1991. By then, back-stage talks between Israeli and Palestinian “academics” and “individuals” over dinners in idyllic settings in northern Europe had reached the stage that the [...]
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Filed under: Israel, Palestine & Palestinians, UN General Assembly, UN Security Council, United Nations, US in UN
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