Palestinian Speaker Cites Outstanding U.N. Resolutions

By Ian Williams

November 29 was the anniversary of the 1947 U.N. resolution partitioning Palestine, which is why, with a sense of irony, it was adopted as the "International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People." At the U.N. itself, the occasion was marked by a display of Palestinian costumes which, innocuous as it may have seemed, provoked a bureaucratic row. The captions, identifying which districts the costumes came from, were held to be provocative to a "member state," so there were attempts to label some of the exhibits of century-old clothes as coming from Israel, established 45 years ago.

After a furious day-long meeting, the U.N. added a paragraph to the captions stating that the exhibits "come from various areas of mandatory Palestine, including some localities inside Israel since 1948." Mrs. Hanan Munayyer who, with her husband, Farah, had lent part of their collection to form the exhibition, was sanguine about it. "At least it admits that it was all one, once, until part was taken away," she told us.

Equally taken up with history was the address of PLO Foreign Minister Farouq Qaddoumi to the General Assembly to commemorate the same day. Although it is well known that his enthusiasm is limited for the accord on principles of peace between PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, he kept to the official line for the occasion, although speaking precisely where others had fudged.

In particular, he reminded the world's diplomats that there were clear positions of international law on some of the Palestinian issues whose solutions had still to be resolved in negotiations. On Jerusalem, "the capital of our Palestinian state," and on Israeli settlements he declared that the "international community and the Security Council have a clear position" which "must be upheld." Most tellingly, he declared that the problem of the 2.8 million Palestinian refugees should be resolved according to resolution 194 of 1948, enshrining the right of return or compensation for those who did not want to return. That resolution has been reaffirmed annually by the General Assembly ever since it first was adopted.

Many of those resolutions have been described by Israeli or American representatives as "obsolete." However, their hopes that all the resolutions would be dropped are far from realized. Arab U.N. members stick to the point that resolutions expressing basic principles of international law should stand.

There is now basic agreement on a new resolution, replacing several older ones, which welcomes recent developments and calls for international support. U.S. diplomats tried unsuccessfully to bring this one forward earlier in the session, so that it would be held to replace the other resolutions when they came up later.

Now the new resolution will be debated at the same time as the other resolutions on Jerusalem, the Golan Heights and on Israeli practices and settlements in the occupied territories. They will call, yet again, for the Fourth Geneva Convention to apply to the territories, putting the U.S. in a quandary since this is a position that Washington–in common with every other government in the world except one–has always supported.

Supporting "Peace Implementation"

PLO official Qaddoumi also praised the work of UNRWA in the region. For the past 45 years UNRWA has been the lifeline for millions of Palestinian refugees, the world community's tangible recompense for the wrong done in 1948. If, or when, the Palestinian state is set up, its health and education services–and indeed the education of many of its of ficials–will be the legacy of the agency. This year the U.S. government will be contributing foreign aid funds to UNRWA's "Peace Implementation Project." On Nov. 16, USAID announced a $5.88 million project to rehabilitate 450 shelters for refugees and repaint hundreds of UNRWA schools.

Not all UNRWA developments were welcomed by the Palestinians, however. For two years, Ilter Turkmen, a former Turkish ambassador to the U.N., has been the UNRWA High Commissioner. Mild, unassuming, effective and sincere, he has deeply impressed all who work with him. Two years ago, he told the Washington Report that UNRWA's Gaza Hospital would be "a birthday present for the new state." The statement seemed even more optimistic then than it would now. Perhaps, according to one worldly-wise Arab diplomat, because Ambassador Turkmen's efficiency distinguishes him from the crowd, there are rumors that secretary-general Boutros Boutros-Ghali plans to replace him next March.

Libya Faces Tightened Sanctions

Elsewhere in the region, Libya now faces increased sanctions after having gained a reprieve by the threat of a Russian veto. However, this is not a belated return to the old days of friendship between Moscow and Tripoli. Rather, the Russian veto, like MiGs and, perhaps, anything else portable in Russia, now is up for sale for hard currency. In return for their agreement to harsher sanctions the Russians wanted an interest-free loan of $4 billion from the West, which is approximately what Libya owes the Russians from its frozen assets for previous arms purchases from the Soviet Union.

Diplomatic sources at the U.N. claim that the Libyans offered to pay a substantial part of the debt in return for a Russian veto, and threatened to default on the loans if the Russians supported the resolution proposed by Britain, France and the U.S. In fact the Russian veto-hawking was marked more by its crudity than its mercenary nature, since the highly selective sanctions package that passed, after Western arm-twisting in Moscow, was customized to protect the economic interests of the West Europeans from the effects of increased sanctions by avoiding any embargo on petroleum sales.

Western Sahara Talks Halted

The face-to-face talks on Western Sahara scheduled at U.N. headquarters between Morocco and the Polisario broke down at the end of October. The Polisario withdrew when it discovered that the Moroccan delegation included Ibrahim Hakim, Polisario's former foreign minister, who defected from the organization last year.

The Moroccans pointed to a memorandum by Yaqoub Khan, the U.N. secretary-general's special representative for Western Sahara, which gave each delegation the right to choose its own personnel. However, Morocco's move irritated its own best friends on the Security Council. Some diplomats, including even the French, were "exasperated" by the Moroccan move, which they saw as "provocative. "

Other observers took it as confirmation that King Hassan, even with the revised franchise, does not feel assured of winning the proposed referendum on the Western Sahara. The Polisario saw it as a long-term plot to "do a Bosnia" on the issue. By including defected Sahrawis, they feel that Rabat's aim is to present the issue as an internal rather than an international one.

What perplexes many observers is that Morocco's term on the Security Council finishes at the end of the year. It would be to Moroccan advantage to ensure that whatever happens does so while it has leverage in the Council. By provoking a Polisario walkout, the Moroccan government has prevented the issue being dealt with until after its term ends. Oman, the Arab country replacing Morocco on the Security Council, is unlikely to safeguard the issue quite as fervently.

Boenia Accuses U.K.

Beleaguered Bosnia remains determined to remind other U.N. members of international laws, if that is not an oxymoron in the present state of the new world order. Bosnian Ambassador to the U.N. Mohamed Sacirbey announced that his government is taking Britain to the World Court as an accomplice to genocide. The basis for the charge is that London has played a key role in maintaining the arms embargo on Bosnia-Herzegovina, thereby depriving a U.N. member state of the means of self-defense in the face of genocide. Apart from the role of controversial former British Foreign Minister David Owen, whom the Bosnians assume is working closely with his government, what particularly vexed the Bosnians was a remark by President Bill Clinton to Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic. The U.S. president told his Bosnian counterpart that the U.S. could not act more strongly to lift the arms embargo because British Prime Minister John Major had said that if Clinton did, the Major government (the most unpopular since British public opinion polls began) would fall. Not unreasonably, Sacirbey saw no reason why Bosnians should continue to die to keep Major in power. The British were distressed by the accusation–but not enough to change their policy.

Ian Williams is a U.N.-based British journalist.