Inner City Press
By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, March 8, updated — Four days before ministers Lavrov, Hague, Araud and Hillary Clinton descend with high representatives of China and Gulf States on the UN to discuss the Arab Spring, the US Mission hosted another meeting on a Syria draft resolution, for the third day in a row.
The idea, a Western diplomat told the Press, is to keep the negotiation process going hoping to catch lightning in a bottle on March 12. But can they get a report-back by then from envoy Kofi Annan’s trip, which only starts March 10?
A Gulf country diplomat told Inner City Press that the draft is “already weak and getting weaker.” There are moves to strip out any “further measures,” and to switch the sequence of stopping violence to “in conjunction.”
Realistically, it seems unlikely the Syrian opposition would ever agree that Assad’s forces had pulled out. So, the argument goes, a vacuum would be created and the opposition take over.
Inner City Press stumbled on the P5 Plus Morocco meeting while returning from a briefing at the Mexican Mission about the G20, and a stakeout of North Korean nuclear negotiators in the Millennium Hotel in the same building.
The informative Mexican G20 delegation, about whom we will be writing more, has not met with Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. But Ban was spotted on the afternoon of March 7 going into the Millennium Hotel. Inquiring minds want to know: what for? Watch this site.
Update of 5:40 pm — the P5 and Morocco had not come out of the US Mission after 1 hour, 40 minutes. A UN Special Representative who came by told Inner City Press Syria had not granted access. A delayed stakeout on women and mediation was to begin – watch this site.
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