http://africa.reuters.com/wire/news/usnN28360832.html
Reuters
August 28, 2008
Russia, U.S trade barbs over Iraq, Kosovo at UN
By Louis Charbonneau
-"I would like to ask the distinguished representative
of the United States - weapons of mass destruction.
Have you found them yet in Iraq or are you still
looking for them?"
UNITED NATIONS - U.S. and Russian envoys exchanged
sharp words on Thursday over Iraq and Kosovo at a U.N.
Security Council meeting on Georgia, at which Russia
found little support for its actions in the Caucasus.
It was the council's sixth emergency session on the
crisis in the former Soviet republic, which Russia
invaded earlier this month to thwart an attempt by
Tbilisi to restore [sic] its control over a breakaway
region.
Like the five previous council meetings on the brief
war this month between Russia and Georgia, the
15-nation body passed no resolution or statement due
to Russia's veto powers.
The meeting was characterized by Cold War-style
exchanges of insults between the U.S. and Russian U.N.
ambassadors that reflected the growing tensions
between the two countries.
U.S. Deputy Ambassador Alejandro Wolff told the
meeting it was a violation of the U.N. charter for
member states to use force against others, or threaten
to use it, and suggested that Moscow's claims to be
protecting Russian citizens in Georgia's South Ossetia
region were a sham.
Russia's U.N. envoy, Vitaly Churkin, suggested Wolff's
statement was hypocritical and referred to the
U.S.-led March 2003 invasion of Iraq, which Moscow
strongly opposed.
"I would like to ask the distinguished representative
of the United States - weapons of mass destruction.
Have you found them yet in Iraq or are you still
looking for them?"
The United States justified the invasion of Iraq by
saying it had to find and secure what it said were
caches of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons
hidden by then-President Saddam Hussein. The weapons
were never found.
....
'JUST LIKE KOSOVO'
Churkin also cited NATO's 1999 bombing campaign
against Serbia to force it to withdraw from its Kosovo
region. He likened the declaration of independence by
South Ossetia and another Georgian separatist enclave,
Abkhazia, to Kosovo's Western-backed secession from
Serbia in February 2008.
....
The Security Council has so far refused to accept a
request from envoys of South Ossetia and Abkhazia,
which Russia recognized this week as independent
states, to address it.
....
Serbian News Network - SNN
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http://www.antic.org/
