UN farce as Libya judges Israeli rights

[drdon326]

http://www.news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=786192003

ISRAEL will find itself in front of a Libyan ‘judge’ when it appears in the dock at the United Nations this week over alleged human rights abuses.

The UN’s Human Rights Commission - chaired by a diplomat from the North African country that was behind the Lockerbie bombing - will hear Israeli officials defend their country’s record in what is sure to be a stormy encounter in Geneva.

It is also certain that Israel’s case will be swept aside in a welter of criticisms of the Jewish state, which will result in condemnatory resolutions, all of which will be approved by the UN body.

The proceedings’ main effect will be to provide an angry backdrop to the latest efforts to make progress on the Middle East ‘road map’, which has already got off to a shaky start.

Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas is to meet Israeli leader Ariel Sharon (below) today and press him to release more Palestinian prisoners, a move that Palestinians believe will bolster the US-sponsored peace effort. Abbas and Sharon will make separate trips to Washington later this week to meet President George W Bush.

The UN Human Rights Commission sits at the Palais Wilson, former home of the League of Nations, a location the UN website describes as "The House of Human Rights".

But controversially, the chairwoman in charge of proceedings is a Libyan, Najat al-Hajjajia. The career diplomat, elected on a rota basis, promised she would be impartial. Yet one of her first actions at the beginning of the year was to use the platform to launch a political speech against the US over Iraq.

Then the Commission barred the non-governmental body, Reporters Without Borders, from attending its meetings as a punishment for criticising Libya’s record on human rights.

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the UN...CLASS-A SCHMUCKS