Tag Archives: Resignation

Syria investigator del Ponte signs off with a sting

Carla del Ponte, member of the Independent Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic attends a news conference into events in Aleppo at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, March 1, 2017.

GENEVA (Reuters) – Veteran prosecutor Carla del Ponte signed off from the United Nations Syria investigation on Monday by criticizing the U.N. Security Council and telling Syria’s ambassador his government had used chemical weapons.

The former Swiss attorney general, who went on to prosecute war crimes in Rwanda and former Yugoslavia, said in August she was resigning from the U.N. Commission of Inquiry on Syria because of a lack of political backing.

Bidding farewell to the U.N. Human Rights Council, which set up the Commission of Inquiry six years ago, Del Ponte said she had quit out of frustration.

“We could not obtain from the international community and the Security Council a resolution putting in place a tribunal, an ad hoc tribunal for all the crimes that are committed in Syria,” she said.

“Seven years of crime in Syria and total impunity. That is not acceptable.”

Del Ponte told a Swiss newspaper last month enough evidence existed to convict President Bashar al-Assad of war crimes.

Her departure leaves only two remaining commissioners of the inquiry, Karen Koning AbuZayd and the chairman, Paulo Pinheiro, who said that eventually, a great many people would have to answer “as to why they did not act sooner to stop the carnage”.

“The deadlock at the Security Council on Syria is reprehensible and, at times, bewildering,” he told the Human Rights Council.

Leaving the council, del Ponte told Syria’s ambassador that she had been right to quickly reach the conclusion that Assad’s government had used chemical weapons during an attack on the town of Khan Sheikhoun in April.

“It was me, mister ambassador,” she said.

“I said that in my opinion and based on the elements we already had, the Syrian government was responsible. Today we have the confirmation after an official commission’s inquiry. So now, we ask for justice, we ask justice for those victims.”

 

(Reporting by Tom Miles and Cecile Mantovani; editing by Andrew Roche)

 

Senior U.N. official quits after ‘apartheid’ Israel report pulled

U.N. Under-Secretary General and ESCWA Executive Secretary Rima Khalaf speaks during a news conference announcing her resignation from the United Nations in Beirut, Lebanon, March 17, 2017. REUTERS/Jamal Saidi

BEIRUT/UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – A senior U.N. official resigned on Friday over the withdrawal of a report accusing Israel of imposing an “apartheid regime” on Palestinians, saying “powerful member states” pressured the world body and its chief with “vicious attacks and threats.”

United Nations Under-Secretary General and Executive Secretary for the Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA), Rima Khalaf, announced her resignation at a news conference in Beirut after U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres asked for the report to be taken off the ESCWA website.

ESCWA, which comprises 18 Arab states, published the report on Wednesday and said it was the first time a U.N. body had clearly charged that Israel “has established an apartheid regime that dominates the Palestinian people as a whole.”

Israel fiercely rejects the allegation and likened the report to Der Sturmer – a Nazi propaganda publication that was strongly anti-Semitic. The United States, an ally of Israel, had said it was outraged and demanded the report be withdrawn.

“I do not find it surprising that such member states, who now have governments with little regard for international norms and values of human rights, will resort to intimidation when they find it hard to defend their unlawful policies and practices,” Khalaf, of Jordan, wrote to Guterres.

“It is only normal for criminals to pressure and attack those who advocate the cause of their victims,” Khalaf wrote in the resignation letter, seen by Reuters, adding that she stands by the ESCWA report.

Israel and the United States did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Khalaf’s letter.

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, said earlier on Friday that Khalaf’s resignation was appropriate and Israel’s U.N. Ambassador Danny Danon said it was “long overdue.

“Anti-Israel activists do not belong in the UN,” Danon said in a statement.”

“U.N. agencies must do a better job of eliminating false and biased work, and I applaud the Secretary-General’s decision to distance his good office from it,” Haley said in a statement.

The report was published without consultation with the U.N. secretariat, U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric had said.

“This is not about content, this is about process,” Dujarric told reporters in New York on Friday.

“The secretary-general cannot accept that an under-secretary general or any other senior U.N. official that reports to him would authorize the publication under the U.N. name, under the U.N. logo, without consulting the competent departments and even himself,” he said.

One of the authors of the report was Richard Falk, a former U.N. human rights investigator for the Palestinian territories, whom the United States has accused of being biased against Israel.

The ESCWA report said it had established on the “basis of scholarly inquiry and overwhelming evidence, that Israel is guilty of the crime of apartheid.”

While the report was taken off the ECWAS website, Khalaf told reporters: “Let me be clear, the report was issued … and has impacts. The member states received copies of this report. And it is available.”

(Reporting by Ellen Francis in Beirut and Michelle Nichols in New York; Editing by Bernard Orr and Diane Craft)

Greek Prime Minister Resigns

The economic crisis in Greek has forced the nation’s prime minister to resign.

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras announced he will resign and call for new national elections in September.  The move is seen as an attempt to thwart more radical members of his own party from stopping the economic reforms that were required as part of the nation’s latest bailout package.

“I am resigning because I have now exhausted the mandate which the public gave me in January’s general election,” Tsipras said in a national address.  “You will judge us, the ones that promoted the drachma pathway and the ones that served the old system.”

While some government sources are saying the elections would take place on September 20th, Tsipras did not give a specific date in his national address.

Opinion polls show that Tsipras is the current favorite to regain his position as PM.

In the interim, the nation’s first female PM will take over on a temporary basis.  Vassiliki Thanou-Christophilou, the President of the Supreme Court of Greece, will be in charge of the government until a new PM is chosen.

The announcement had an immediate impact on the nation’s economy, as Greek bonds suffered an immediate drop.

Greek Finance Minister Resigns Ahead of Bailout Vote

Greece’s Finance Minister, Nadia Valavani, has resigned her position after telling Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras that she couldn’t support the bailout measures.

“Alexis, I am ready to serve in any capacity to the end during challenges. However, when our delegation returned with liabilities that are ‘stillborn measures’ and at such a price [by the creditors in fulfilling the reforms program], once again when the dilemma appears of retreating or Grexit, it will be impossible for me to remain a member of the government,” reads Valavani’s letter of resignation.

This ‘capitulation’ is so overwhelming that it will not allow a regrouping of forces. With your signature there will be a deterioration in the status of an already suffering population, and this will be a tombstone around their necks for many years with little potential of redemption,” she wrote.

Valavani was in charge of taxation and overseeing privatization in the nation.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) expanded on initial criticisms offered Tuesday of the deal between Tsipras and EU officials, saying that Greece’s debts now exceed $300 billion and that creditors will have to write off some of the debt if there is any hope of Greece repaying what it owes.

The European Commission has been critical of giving more money to Greece than what is already being offered.

“Greece has already received more international financing than all of Europe did from the U.S. Marshall Plan after the Second World War,” Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said.

Greece’s energy minister, Panagiotis Lafazanis, said Wednesday that even if the deal passes the Parliament, the country’s people will never accept it and unite against it.