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Syrian UN Envoy Draws Parallels Between WTC Attacks & Israeli Actions
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| UN Syrian envoy sparks anger at Security Council session |
UNITED NATIONS, Jan. 20 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Syria sparked anger when it compared Israel’s demolition of Palestinian houses to the destruction of the World Trade Center in New York in its maiden speech as a Security Council member Friday.
Fayssal Mekdad, a top diplomat in the Syrian mission to the United Nations, told the council that "foreign occupation is the most brutal form of terrorism."
The session was supposed to be a debate about the role the Security Council has to play in encouraging the global community to improve its counter-terrorism strategy, reported the BBC's online news service.
But attending delegates were furious when he added that the demolition of Palestinian homes by the Israeli army "is not much different from the scene of the World Trade Center, destroyed by terrorists."
An aide to John Negroponte, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, described the speech as "outrageous", while Yehuda Lancry, the Israeli ambassador, said it was "an attempt to divert attention" from Syria's own terrorist activities, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).
The Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles denounced Mekdad's remarks as "an Orwellian smear on the thousands of innocent people who were murdered in the World Trade Center and in the state of Israel."
In a statement, Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Wiesenthal Center, said the speech highlighted "the absurdity of Syria's election to serve in the Security Council."
The accusations and counter accusations soured the tone of the debate and the British ambassador, Jeremy Greenstock, who is the chairman of the UN counter-terrorism committee, called for restraint.
"We must not get caught up in the rhetoric of political conflict," he said. "If states abuse their power they should be judged" by the standards of international law, BBC reported.
Syria became one of the 10 non-permanent council members on January 1, 2002, and will serve for two years.
On December 14, 2001, Negroponte used his right of veto as one of the council's five permanent members to torpedo a resolution condemning violence in the Middle East, saying it was biased against Israel.
At the time, the French foreign minister, Hubert Vedrine, said the draft resolution was "reasonable" and the use of the veto "incomprehensible".
The United States vetoed a similar resolution March 2001.
Meanwhile, the Secretary General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan warned U.N. member states Friday that they would defeat their own purposes if they sacrificed human rights and other key priorities in the fight against terrorism.
"We should all be clear that there is no trade-off between effective action against terrorism and the protection of human rights," he told a public meeting of the Security Council.
The debate was called to assess work done by the council's Counter-Terrorism Committee (CTC), set up after the September 11 attacks on the United States.
The CTC's task is to monitor the response to council Resolution 1373, which obliges all member states to pass laws and take government action to deny financing, support and safe harbor to terrorist groups.
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