Mideast situation/Palestine question – GA general debate – Verbatim record (excerpts)

Official Records

General Assembly
Sixty-first session
74th plenary meeting
Tuesday, 12 December 2006, 10 a.m. 
New York

    The meeting was called to order at 10.15 a.m.

Agenda items 9 and 111 (continued )

Report of the Security Council (A/61/2)

  Question of equitable representation on and increase in the membership of the Security Council and related matters

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 Mr. Hamidon (Malaysia): …

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  My delegation welcomes the Council's continued consideration of the questions of Palestine and the Middle East through its monthly briefings and open debates. However, they have not had a significant impact on the situation on the ground. Violence continues unabated, while death and destruction continue to mount, particularly on the Palestinian side. We wonder why this is happening, even when the Council is continuously seized of the matter. The Council must maintain and improve its credibility by enforcing its authority on these questions. It must discharge its responsibilities in the maintenance of peace and security. It must resist any party’s manipulating the Council and preventing it from taking action that would end conflict, restore peace and security and prevent further loss of life.

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 Mr. Yousfi (Algeria) (spoke in French ): …

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  Members of the United Nations have assigned to the Security Council primary responsibility, once again, for the maintenance of international peace and security. This delegation of responsibility, which deals with an area as sensitive as questions of peace and security, implies that the Council must respect the wishes of those who have given it this mandate, especially, when expressed by a large majority.

  Such is the case with the question of Palestine and the situation in the Middle East, in particular, where the General Assembly resolutions are systematically ignored by the Security Council. The use of the veto to prevent the Council from exercising its responsibility vis-à-vis the cause of the Palestinian people and the Arab-Israeli conflict represents a challenge to the wishes of the same community on whose behalf the Council is supposed to act. Moreover, the Council’s inability to meet and to call for a ceasefire while Lebanon and its people were facing a very murderous war for an entire month represents a tendency that, unfortunately, has undermined its credibility.

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 Mr. Zarif (Islamic Republic of Iran): …

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  The report also refers to the situation in the Middle East, especially the Palestinian question, which has continued to be under consideration by the Council. In the period under review, the situation on the ground deteriorated as a result of Israeli aggression and crimes against the people in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon, and its continued occupation of Palestinian, Lebanese and Syrian lands. The Council was persistently rendered ineffective in addressing these crimes despite their gravity. During the period under review, two draft resolutions on the Palestinian issue were again vetoed, and efforts to end Israeli aggression against Lebanon were thwarted and delayed for 34 long days. Moreover, no action has been allowed, or even contemplated, to ensure compliance by the Israeli regime with many Security Council resolutions adopted over the last six decades.

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  Mr. Anzola Quinto (Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela) (spoke in Spanish ): …

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 Venezuela firmly supports all resolutions reaffirming the principles that should form the basis for a peaceful and equitable settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — a settlement that will lead to a stable and lasting peace in the Middle East region. In that connection, we believe that the full realization of the fundamental rights of the Palestinian people is essential. My country continues to wonder why the Palestinians are paying for crimes of Nazi barbarism.

  Last August, the Security Council adopted, with curious urgency, two resolutions aimed at preventing alleged potential threats to international peace and security but took four weeks to take action on the real and grave situation in Lebanon. Those four weeks made it possible — with astonishing Council inaction — to carry out a slaughter of civilians and to destroy installations, infrastructure and other targets, including civilian targets. More recently, we again witnessed Council inaction in the face of new violations of human rights and international humanitarian law, as in the 8 November massacre at Beit Hanoun. Faced by this inaction by the Council — owing to the veto of one of its permanent members — the General Assembly had to shoulder its responsibilities in the area of international peace and security by resuming its tenth emergency special session to address the issue and to take measures in that regard.

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    The meeting rose at 1.10 p.m.

This record contains the text of speeches delivered in English and of the interpretation of speeches delivered in the other languages. Corrections should be submitted to the original languages only. They should be incorporated in a copy of the record and sent under the signature of a member of the delegation concerned to the Chief of the Verbatim Reporting Service, room C-154A. Corrections will be issued after the end of the session in a consolidated corrigendum.