Expellees, Western Sahara, Bosnia and Nuclear Weapons on 1993 Agenda

By Ian Williams

The 400 Palestinian deportees were still freezing on a Lebanese hillside almost two months after Secretary of State Warren Christopher and Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin had "finally settled" the question in a deal that was supposedly ratified by the Security Council president's press statement on Feb. 12 Only members of the new administration in Washington seemed in any way surprised that the deal was not quite as done as they expected. The offer to return 100 deportees immediately, and the rest within a year, was supposed to be accompanied by a pledge by Rabin that he would forswear future use of deportation if the Palestinians were to be persuaded back to the peace talks.

In fact, Christopher did his part, Rabin didn't do his, and the Palestinian delegates to the peace talks, who had told Christopher they could return to the negotiations if such announcements were made, are still waiting. With cooperation of the U.S. media, the failed deal may become just another non-event in the non-history of the Israeli-Palestinian "peace process.''

As Palestinian representative to the U.N. Nasser Al-Kidwa pointed out in a letter the following week, "there is no Security Council document or anything in the records of the Council that would indicate any formal action taken by the Council" on the day matters were "finally settled." Nor has Christopher ever gone public to explain why the solution, which his entourage predicted to the Palestinians during the secretary's last evening in Jerusalem, never took place.

Sixteen of the expellees in Lebanon are Palestinian employees of the United Nations—mostly teachers with UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency. Nevertheless, Ambassador Ahmed Snoussi of Morocco, president of the Security Council in February, who supervised the untidy "winding up" of U.N. Security Council Resolution 799's call for the "immediate" repatriation of the 400, was unruffled when I asked him about his feelings on the matter. He told me that he had "asked advice from some members of the Security Council, and we arrived at the idea that Israel should come to the Security Council." The idea was "to call the [Israeli] ambassador to have him tell me that they would respect 799 and that they would implement it; that the deportees would be returned before the end of the year and as soon as possible. It has been described by some people as not being an official action, just a personal conversation. I repeat that I did all this in my capacity as president of the Security Council, and not in my capacity as ambassador of Morocco."

Did that mean, I asked him, that if the Israelis do not make further concessions on the deportees, then 799 was still as dead an issue before the Council as Warren Christopher implied?

"No, the Security Council remains seized of the question until it is definitely solved," he replied. "I think the most reasonable thing is to wait until Mr. Christopher tells us what he did and what he is going to do. I think so, because I had the conviction both from the American or the Israeli authorities, that something will be done to prove the goodwill and respect for the terms of the exchange between Israel and the Security Council."

So were there extra offers made by Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres or Israeli Ambassador to the U.N. Gad Yaacobi? Did they say they would do more?

"I repeat, I had the conviction that something would be done," the ambassador insisted. "After talking to all these people, it is clear that definitely something will be there."

"Definitely?" I asked. "Yes!" he reiterated.

Asked about a widespread feeling that there was a deal done between the issue of the Palestinian deportees and Morocco's plan for the Western Sahara, the ambassador bridled. "You will see when the draft resolution on Western Sahara is adopted that, firstly, it has nothing to do with us. This is a resolution asked for by the secretary-general. This resolution does not state anything on the Sahara problem, it is about the implementation of existing resolutions. We have nothing to do with it, and I have more motivation to try to help the Palestinians. That has nothing to do with this problem. The comparison with the big problem of the deportees is absolutely stupid."

The Western Sahara Referendum

Coincidence or not, shortly after the deal or non-deal was or wasn't made concerning the Palestinians, Resolution 809 on Western Sahara went through the Council unanimously. It mandates the secretary-general to continue with the somewhat belated referendum on whether the Sahrawis wanted to be annexed by Morocco back in 1975. No one opposes the referendum. The dispute between the Algerian-backed Polisario movement and the Moroccan government is over who is eligible to vote in the referendum as a Sahrawi resident of the area in question. In effect, the resolution leaves the decision on who votes to the U.N., which, in the past, has tended to come down on the side of Rabat.

In his last week in office at the end of 1991, former U.N. Secretary-General Perez de Cuellar brought in a report suggesting that, besides the 74,000 Sahrawis listed on the last census before the Spanish quit the colony, several hundred thousand residents of Morocco who claim Sahrawi origin should be added to the voters' roll. Recently, the Moroccan news agency announced that a Moroccan conglomerate in which the royal family has a major holding had bought a French company, OPTORG, and appointed Perez de Cuellar as its deputy chief. Needless to say, the news provoked uncharitable speculation.

When asked, the former secretary-general said that indeed he had been contacted on the subject, but he had never accepted the offer. Many observers, however, took the whole episode as an indication that Rabat felt itself in the debt of the former secretary-general.

A draft resolution sponsored by France and Morocco would have confirmed the extension of the franchise to vote in the referendum to the additional voters living in Morocco, but it met with some opposition from other members of the Council. In the end, the resolution "recalled" that version but gave current Secretary-General Boutros-Ghali until May to secure agreement between the parties. While Polisario sees this as a victory, there has been little in the conduct of the United Nations that would totally justify their optimism. The various emissaries sent out to the territory have applied even less pressure on Morocco than their counterparts have upon the Serbs in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

"Misprision of Felony" in Bosnia

Events in Bosnia continued to prove what Middle East watchers have observed over many years—that all Security Council decisions are legally binding, but some are less binding than others. The continued Serbian refusal to allow humanitarian convoys through to the Bosnian enclaves provoked little reaction in New York except presidential statements. For example, on Jan. 25, one such statement warned sternly of "serious consequences" if the aid convoys were hindered. On Feb. 17, yet another statement "reiterated its demand that the parties concerned" allow the convoys through. The immovable Serbs doubtless did not know whether to quake with fear or invite the local U.N. commanders to lunch while awaiting the next statement to ignore.

Similarly, the much heralded plan to set up a war crimes tribunal has been dismissed by some diplomats as playing to the gallery. While its forensic teams have produced clear evidence of atrocities, it is difficult to see how the perpetrators can be brought to justice—not least when some of Bosnia's most wanted are invited as honored participants to the action replay of Munich which passes for peace talks. In common law, there is a crime of "misprision of felony," applied to those who stand by and watch a crime being committed without taking action to stop it. One cannot help feeling that the best chance the tribunal has of a conviction is to put in the dock on this charge the Western powers that have allowed genocidal rape and murder to continue for a full year.

Kyrgystan's Second Thought

The Kyrgyzstan Mission at the U.N. was the conduit for a message from its president, Askar Akaev, retracting an early misstep in his foreign policy. The Kyrgystani president had been widely reported as declaring that he would be opening an embassy to Israel in Jerusalem. Clearly he subsequently discovered that few of his Muslim co-religionists were happy over the recognition of Israel, and none were happy over the projected location of the embassy. Only two countries in the world have situated their embassies to Israel in disputed Jerusalem instead of Tel Aviv.

In a letter circulated as an official U.N. document, President Akaev finessed the earlier reports. A "diplomatic presence in Israel will depend on the results of the peace talks," the letter said.

Spotlight on Non-proliferation

The "bombshell," if one may forgive the word, of North Korea's three-month notice to the Security Council that it was going to withdraw from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty rather than allow inspections of its facilities forces the new U.S. delegation to the U.N. to face still another embarrassment posed by the persistent U.S. shielding of Israel from compliance with outstanding U.N. resolutions. No one has overmuch sympathy for Kim II Sung's North Korean regime, but the immediate talk of action against it soon led to some deeper thoughts.

How can a Security Council containing both India and Pakistan, themselves non-signatories, move against a country which merely wants to join them in that state? How can the U.S. invoke firm action against North Korea, and then consistently extend diplomatic protection to Israel, which now is believed to have more nuclear warheads than Britain? Israel never has signed the non-proliferation treaty, and it is highly unlikely to do so since it then would have to throw its nuclear weapons facilities open to inspection.

Personnel Politics

Many people were concerned that the Bush administration's appointment of former U.S. Attorney General Dick Thornburgh and Ambassador Joseph Verner Reed to senior positions in the United Nations bureaucracy, as separate from the U.S. Mission to the U.N., have made the U.N. organization a part of the White House spoils system. Such suspicions were confirmed when Thornburgh's and Reed's contracts were not renewed after the inauguration of President Bill Clinton. The Clinton administration will replace Thornburgh with a career diplomat, Ambassador Melissa Wells, who has extensive sub-Saharan experience. Reed, it is reported, will be replaced by Gillian Sorensen, currently president of the National Conference of Christians and Jews.