| NOVANEWS | |
By Ronda Hauben |
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Global Research, |
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Journalists Question Security Council Support for Rebel Group At the April 4 press conference marking the beginning of the Colombian Presidency of the Security Council for April, Nestor Osorio, the Colombian Ambassador to the United Nations was asked what on the surface would seem an unusual question by one of the journalists. The journalist said (1):“In the wake of Security Council Resolution 1973 [authorizing military action against Libya–ed] are we to expect a more aggressive and proactive posture on the part of the Security Council in supporting rebel groups?”The journalist gave several examples of such rebel groups as the IRA in the UK, ETA in Spain and perhaps the Corsican rebels in France. Another journalist added the example of the FARC in Colombia.The question referred to the fact that with SC Resolution 1973, the UN Security Council had taken on to support an armed insurgency fighting against the government of a member nation of the UN.The Colombian Ambassador responded that SC Resolution 1973 had not been adopted to support the rebels in Libya, but a rebel group which started out as civilians who had now become the core of the armed rebellion. The reason the Security Council had taken up the issue of Libya, he said, was because a member of the Security Council, Lebanon, had brought the issue to the Security Council. Ambassador Osorio added that the Arab League had asked for concrete action from the Security Council on Libya.Is it, as Ambassador Osorio proposed, that the issue of Libya was taken up by the Security Council because Lebanon, a member of the Security Council, brought the issue to the attention of the other members? Is it that the Security Council was just deferring to the expertise of the Arab League, which the Colombian Ambassador presented as the relevant regional organization with respect to Libya?The Colombian Ambassador’s remarks raise the question of how the Security Council made the decision to approve SC Resolution 1970 against Libya, the first of two resolutions on the issue. Was it as the Colombian Ambassador claimed because of a recommendation from the appropriate regional group, or was there a more complex process at work? Also, significantly in this situation, there were actually two conflicting recommendations to the Security Council from two groups, one from the Arab League, which is not a geographical regional group but is organized on some other basis, and the other from the geographic regional group that Libya is part of, from the African Union.What were the factors that influenced the Security Council decisions first, to pass Security Council Resolution 1970 authorizing stringent sanctions, including a referral of Libyan officials to the International Criminal Court (ICC) and then, subsequently, to pass SC Resolution 1973, which authorized a no-fly zone and other military action? Ultimately these decisions set the basis for the NATO military alliance to join with the armed insurgency fighting against the government of Libya.While it is difficult to determine the specific underlying reasons for Security Council action, this article will demonstrate that the explanation provided to journalists at the Colombian press conference differs significantly from the actual sequence of events that occurred at the Security Council with respect to Libya. By failing to account for the actual sequence of events that occurred, the Colombian Ambassador’s response left unanswered the critical question. How had the Security Council come to authorize military action against a member nation of the United Nations, in support of an armed insurgency against the government of that nation? Such a course of action is clearly contrary to the UN Charter provision not to intervene in the internal affairs of a member nation of the UN (Article 2 Section 7).How the Issue of Libya was Brought to the Security CouncilLooking back at the sequence of events by which the issue of Libya was brought to the Security Council, leads to an important observation. It was not a Security Council member nation which started this process. Nor was it the Arab League. Rather it was a party that one could argue had no legitimate basis to speak at the United Nations, especially not to the Security Council.This party, was, by that time, the former Chargé d’Affaires to the United Nations for the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, Ibrahim Dabbashi. Dabbashi had taken the unusual actions of first announcing to the press that he had defected from representing the government of Libya at the UN, and then requesting an emergency meeting of the Security Council about the situation in Libya. His request to the Security Council began a process which, in less than a week, resulted in passing the stringent sanctions against Libya and the referral of its officials to the ICC that are included in SC Resolution 1970. SC Resolution 1970 then set the stage for SC Resolution 1973 passed three weeks later which authorized military action against Libya.February 21 is an important date in this set of events. It is on February 21 that Dabbashi announced his defection from the service of the government of Libya at the United Nations. While an appropriate course for a defecting government official from a country would be to resign his official position as a Deputy Ambassador for Libya at the United Nations, this is not what happened.It is also on February 21 that another important event occurred, though not at the UN. Another Libyan official, Nouri al Mesmari, officially announced his defection from his Libyan government position. Living in France under the protection of the French government, he gave an interview to the French newspaper Liberation about his defection.What is significant about Mesmari’s action is that his defection puts Dabbashi’s defection in a broader context. A widely circulated article in the Italian newspaper Libero, an article which has not been refuted or denied, provides this context.(2) Mesmari left Libya in October 2010 for Paris, four months before the alleged suppression of demonstrations cited as one of the pretexts for the NATO aggression against Libya. Mesmari had been an important Libyan official with vast knowledge of and contact with the foreign service officials of Libya and vast knowledge of Libya’s contacts with government officials in other countries.Libero reported that after Mesmari went to Paris in October 2010, he was in contact not only with French foreign intelligence officials, but also with elements of the Libyan opposition. His actions help to shed light on the events in Libya in February 2011. Learning about some of the activities Mesmari was part of between October 2010, and February 2011, several commentators propose that Mesmari, along with other opposition activists, and officials in the French intelligence, helped to foment the uprising in Benghazi that took place in February 2011.(3)Unlike the Egyptian non violent protests, the uprising in Benghazi very quickly became an armed uprising against the government of Libya. Western media accounts of this rebellion, and Arab news media like Aljazeera, reported a series of unverified allegations by those involved in the rebellion itself, with little or no evidence presented to verify the accuracy of the reports. To this date, there is no evidence for the widely reported “use of mercenaries” or “bombing his own people.” (4)Mesmari was granted protection by the French government. In his February 21 interview with the French publication Liberation about his defection, he accused the Libyan government of genocide. He gave no evidence to support his claim.Similarly, when Dabbashi held a press conference at the Libyan Mission to the UN on February 21, he claimed that the Libyan government was guilty of genocide. He, too, offered no evidence for his allegations. He called for the overthrow of the Libyan state headed by Muammar Gaddafi. Similarly, the lawyer for the Libyan mission spoke to journalists at the February 21 press conference. He indicated to journalists that he was from Benghazi. He, too, called for the overthrow of Gaddafi, the long time head of the Libyan state (a position called ‘Guide’).Following is the content of the letter that Dabbashi, as a defector from the official government of Libya, sent to the Security Council. The letter is dated February 21, 2011 (5):“In accordance with rule 3 of the provisional rules of procedure of the Security Council, I have the honour to request an urgent meeting of the Council, to discuss the grave situation in Libya and to take the appropriate actions.”The letter is listed as an official document of the Security Council, and given the document identification symbol S/2011/102, dated February 22, 2011.It is worth noting that Rule 3 of the Security Council’s Provisional Rules of Procedure provides for a member nation of the United Nations to request a meeting.(6) Under Rule 3, Dabbashi, as a defecting Deputy Ambassador of Libya, was not entitled to take part in any Security Council procedures, especially not to request a meeting of the Security Council to take punitive action against the government he has defected from and is seeking to overthrow.Monday, February 21 was an official UN holiday (Presidents’ Day in the US) and the United Nations was not open. On the next working day at the UN, on Tuesday, February 22, the Security Council held a closed meeting on the situation in Libya, under the title “Peace and Security in Africa – Libya”.(7) At the meeting the Security Council heard a report on developments in Libya from Lynn Pascoe, the Under Secretary General for Political Affairs at the UN. In addition to the 15 members of the Security Council, 74 other nations of the UN were present at the closed meeting without any right to vote. So was Dabbashi.The Libyan Ambassador to the UN, Abdel Rahman Shalgham also attended the February 22 Security Council meeting, along with Dabbashi. In informal comments after the meeting, Shalgham indicated that he had been in contact with a relative in Tripoli and was told that the alleged atrocities that the media was claiming had happened in Tripoli were not true. Similarly, speaking to the press, he indicated that he had been in contact with government officials in Tripoli who said that they, too, disputed the claims of atrocities taking place in Tripoli and planned to invite journalists from Al Arabiya and CNN to see for themselves that the allegations were inaccurate.(8)After he made his presentation to the Security Council, Under Secretary General for Political Affairs, Lynn Pascoe spoke to the press at a stakeout. He was asked if he had any evidence of atrocities in Tripoli. He responded that the UN people on the ground there had no such direct evidence. (9)Describing the February 22 closed meeting of the Security Council, the Reuters News Agency said that most of the Libyan delegation had defected. Reuters reported that the Security Council met at the request of Dabbashi, who “was no longer working for the Libyan government”. It would appear to be a serious breach of UN protocol for a defecting official who had formerly been the representative of a nation that is a member of the UN, to be able to request a Security Council meeting and to have the Security Council grant the meeting and allow the defecting official to participate in the meeting. Similarly, to allow the defecting diplomat to make unverified allegations at the meeting against the government of a UN member nation would only compound the serious violation of the UN Charter represented by this abuse of UN processes.Here is the Reuters report (10):“UNITED NATIONS | Tue Feb 22, 2011 4:42pm GMT (Reuters) – The U.N. Security Council held closed-door discussions on Tuesday on the crisis in Libya, with Western envoys and Libya’s own breakaway delegation calling for action by the 15-nation body…The council met at the request of Libyan Deputy Ambassador Ibrahim Dabbashi, who along with most other staff at Libya’s U.N. mission announced on Monday they were no longer working for leader Muammar Gaddafi and represented the country’s people. They called for Gaddafi’s overthrow.”Taking into account Mesmari’s activities with French intelligence officials and Libyan opposition figures, there is the basis to assume that there were powerful forces acting behind the scenes at the UN supporting Dabbashi’s activities and encouraging the Security Council to allow this abuse of its processes.
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