In the good old days, distinguished foreign guests were showered with flowers as they were driven in convertibles from Vnukovo Airport along Moscow's Leninsky Prospekt. Now visits are much more businesslike. Even by today's modest standards, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's visit to Moscow has been very subdued. He arrived without any fanfare, and there is little in the way of specifics on his talks in the Kremlin, the Foreign Ministry and elsewhere, although serious issues were on the agenda.
The issues in question are no secret. President Medvedev voiced his concerns in statements made after his meeting with fellow leaders of the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa). The BRICS leaders discussed the events in Libya and Ivory Coast during their summit on Hainan Island. The crux of the matter is this: How is it that the great (and not so great) powers on the UN Security Council pass a resolution that seeks to end a conflict, only to have a small group of countries take action based on their own interpretation of this document? By "take action" I mean bombing and arming the opposition.
But what does Ban Ki-moon have to do with the liberties taken by some EU countries and the United States, who seem to be looking for trouble around the world? As Medvedev said on Hainan: "For example, the resolution on the developments in Ivory Coast, Resolution 1975, if I remember correctly, talks about using United Nations agencies, but not about supporting one of the sides in the conflict. The UN generally cannot support any side, but in fact that is what we have in Ivory Coast. To be honest, we have some very serious questions to the leadership of the United Nations because it is a very dangerous trend. The UN certainly should make an effort to separate conflicting parties, but it must never help one of the parties, even if we believe that it is in the right."
So, the questions were raised. All that was left to do was wait for the promised serious discussion, which was supposed to take place at a meeting of the Security Council at which the nations participating in the operations in Libya and the Ivory Coast were to report on their enforcement of the relevant resolutions. However, the meeting was never scheduled. Sources in the Russian government said with a smile that these were common procedural games in the UN but that the meeting is inevitable. China, India, Brazil and South Africa are not in a hurry. They are all members of the UN Security Council and will have a chance to make their positions known.
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