"'He read an old version' of the statement at the first meeting. ... 'That first one never happened.'"With these words, a U.N. spokesman erased from the official record -- and so from history's memory -- "a hard-hitting statement denouncing aerial bombardment in the troubled Darfur region in a clear critique of the Sudanese government," read at a session yesterday of the U.N. Security Council by Dr. Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations.
Why the disappearing act?
Turns out that Security Council members -- the P-5 of China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States, plus the T-10 of Belgium, Congo, Ghana, Indonesia, Italy, Panama, Peru, Qatar, Slovakia, and South Africa -- had not agreed to hit Sudan so hard. The session thus was reconvened, and Khalilzad "read out a more anodyne statement that just urged all parties in Darfur, rebels included, to end violence." With that, Reuters reports, "U.N. officials agreed that in effect the earlier session had been superseded."'Nuff said.
