United Nations Report, Pages 22-23

A Costly Vote? Yemen Paid a High Price For 1990 Security Council Veto

By Ian Williams

WHO SAYS votes in the United Nations have little effect? Twenty years ago the U.S. was corralling together the coalition for Desert Storm—the first step for which, under the law-abiding Bush Senior, were U.N. Security Council resolutions authorizing action against Iraq. For most U.N. members, the annexation of a sovereign member state was sufficient cause for such a resolution. Although some members were concerned that Washington seemed to be rushing to a military resolution of the conflict rather than a diplomatic solution, Saddam Hussain’s idea of diplomacy probably won Kuwait and the U.S. more allies than otherwise.

However, temporary Security Council members Cuba—which, of course, had its own issues with the U.S.—and newly reunified Yemen resisted American pressure. They abstained and even voted against the resolutions moved by the U.S., which did not affect the comfortable majority enjoyed by Washington, with Gorbachev’s support.

Whether one agrees or not, that vote was brave, even foolhardy, of Yemen. A member of the U.S. delegation candidly told the Yemeni ambassador that it was “the most expensive vote you ever cast,” and indeed it was, and might even play a part in the chaos there today. Not only did Washington cut off its $70 million foreign aid program, but the Saudis also abandoned their long-standing treaty with Yemen which allowed its nationals preferential treatment as immigrant workers. The Kingdom and the Gulf states brusquely repatriated a million or so Yemenis, whose missing remittances over the past two decades have contributed to the poverty and underdevelopment of the state.

A few years ago, an incident like the Christmas Day crotch bomber might have precipitated another heedless attack on Yemen, a small faraway country of which U.S. politicians like Joseph Lieberman know little and care less. Somehow, they can always countenance a military response against almost any Arab country. When ignorant intelligence goes to war hand-in-hand with such galloping prejudices, the consequences of a massive American incursion into a complex and variegated society such as Yemen would be unimaginable—if it were not that we have actually seen the results in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. Nothing could be more calculated to turn Hillary Clinton’s words about Yemen becoming a regional and global threat into a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Yemen is fissured by conflicts, but the main causes behind them are poverty and lack of resources. The government’s revenue comes from gas and oil sales and foreign aid, and far too much of the cash gets stuck in the vicinity of Sana’a and the president. However, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown seems to be working on the right lines in seeing economic and institutional development as one of the keys for helping Yemen constitute a stronger and more cohesive society—not to mention a police rather than a military solution to terrorism.

He even seems to have reinforced Obama’s disinclination to send in the bombers and the Marines, not least since both Washington and Sana’a seem to have realized that too visible an American hand would be guaranteed to unite all the contending parties under a jihadist banner. Even so, while Brown’s Jan. 27 conference on Yemen was important, in terms of combating terrorism, it was only a sideshow to George Mitchell’s mission to Israel. Economic development and some reining in of corruption in Sana’a might ease the tribal and regional conflicts, but as long as the U.S. sides uncritically with Israel then al- Qaeda will recruit people to carry out its work—and to sanctify whatever tribal battles it puts itself at the head of.

And unless Obama stops the checks and votes going to Binyamin Netanyahu, Mitchell will fail and the bombers will succeed.

But that, of course, would entail enforcement of international law and U.N. resolutions to Israel with at least a soupçon of the rigor with which they were applied to Iraq. The jury is out on whether the U.N.’s compensation deal with Israel announced in January represents a step forward or backward to this end.

Israeli Compensation for Gaza

It was finally confirmed that Israel was paying $10.5 million in compensation for the damage to UNRWA facilities in Gaza on Jan. 15, 2009 during Operation Cast Lead. The IDF used phosphorus shells, which ensured that fire destroyed stockpiles of emergency supplies. It claimed that it was fired on from the U.N. premises but has been unable to substantiate those claims, which were comprehensively refuted by the board of inquiry set up by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

With the IDF’s now legendary sense of timing and diplomacy, the bombardment took place while Ban was actually in Israel trying to secure a cease-fire in Gaza. Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak called it a “grave mistake,” apologized and promised it wouldn’t happen again. U.N. staff were unimpressed. It had happened, over and over again, both in Cast Lead and on earlier occasions—in Qana, Lebanon, for example, twice the target of unjustifiable IDF fatal bombardments. Indeed, in a press conference in May, Ban recalled that when the Jan. 15 incident in Gaza took place, “I was in the region. I immediately took action to talk to concerned ministers of the Israeli government, including the prime minister and defense minister and foreign minister. They all assured me that this will not happen again and they would look into the cases. Unfortunately, after that, other incidents also took place. That, we have protested.”

So much for assurances.

Indeed one is not sure which would be a more distressing scenario: that it was deliberate Israeli policy to hit the U.N., total IDF incompetence, or complete loss of command and control of vigilante elements in the IDF working out their own private agendas.

Ban clearly took it personally, and set up a board of inquiry headed by Ian Martin, a respected figure in the human rights world, and including American Larry Johnson, Sri Lankan Sinha Basnayake and Swiss Lt. Col. Patrick Eichenberger.

It turned out to be almost a dress rehearsal for the Goldstone Report. Israel yelled foul when, unsurprisingly, the board of inquiry report found “that IDF actions involved varying degrees of negligence or recklessness with regard to United Nations premises and to the safety of United Nations staff and other civilians within those premises, with consequent deaths, injuries, and extensive physical damage and loss of property.” It confirmed the use of white phosphorus by Israeli troops and called for compensation for damage to the U.N. premises and stockpiles.

A 27-page executive summary was released, but the rest of the 184-page report has been kept confidential, allegedly because it would compromise the security of the Israeli input—which the Israelis say was ignored. Go figure, as they say. Even more ineptly, the Israelis leaked the substance of the report so that they could denounce it, which could have defeated the whole purpose of burying the full report—it it were not for the slackness of most of the media, which does not go out of its way to challenge Israel.

The inquiry recommended that the U.N. “seek formal acknowledgement by the government of Israel that its public statements alleging that Palestinians fired from within the UNRWA Jabalya school on Jan. 6 and from within the UNRWA Field Office compound on Jan. 15 were untrue and are regretted.” It also recommended that the U.N. seek compensation. It will be a long time before Israel unequivocally and loudly admits that the IDF was either mistaken or lying about Palestinians firing from the compound, for all the reasons that they want the report buried.

But the “reimbursement” has come through. It took some 14 years before the U.S. could get $6 million in compensation from Israel for damage to the USS Liberty—and since one suspects that the amount was simply added to Israel’s next military aid package, even that achievement was highly qualified—so it is indeed an achievement of sorts for Ban to secure payment within a year. It was presumably based on Ehud Barak’s attempts to maintain his “peace” credentials and credibility with Ban Ki-moon.

However, many UNRWA staff feel that it is at far too high a price since it once again let the IDF off the hook, by precluding further action on Martin’s report. The process was far from wasted, however. As the board of inquiry report was being filed, Justice Richard Goldstone began his, and he and his team clearly learned from the experience. The Goldstone Report might be thwarted in the Security Council, but it contains many more recommendations and avenues for action which are currently demonstrating why Israel was so scared of the Gaza Board of Inquiry.

Indeed, former Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni joined the long line of Israeli officials who had to cancel trips abroad—in her case, to Britain—as people across the globe acted on the Goldstone recommendations of universal jurisdiction for war crimes. And within Israel, after whipping up a froth of vituperation against Goldstone, serious figures are now suggesting that Israel act on his central recommendation, to hold a plausible inquiry into events during Cast Lead. Maybe Ban will send them a copy of the Martin board of inquiry report to help.

Ian Williams is a free-lance journalist based at the United Nations and has a blog at <www.deadlinepundit.blogspot.com>.