UN resolution on MH17: How Australia achieved what other nations could not

[nero_bolt]

Well done to Tony Abbott and Julie Bishop

New York:  The United Nations Security Council meets in a beautiful hall that was a gift to the world from the people of Norway when the organisation’s headquarters were built in New York after the dead of World War II were buried.

Since then it has often been a shrine to good intentions, a chamber in which plain language and firm resolve is mangled or obliterated by compromise and interference.

Not on Monday.

When Security Council members, with representatives of nations whose citizens were murdered aboard flight MH17 last week, gathered to pass unanimously an Australian resolution condemning the downing of the flight and demanding immediate access to the site of the atrocity, the dignified repatriation of the remains of the victims and an independent international investigation, the language used was powerful, angry and bitterly sad.

That the resolution survived Russia’s power of veto with its language and intent largely intact was the result of a smart and astonishingly fast diplomatic effort led by Australia

When the Security Council vote was held just after 3pm on Monday, Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop had been in the country for just a day. After arriving in Washington on Sunday, Ms Bishop had travelled straight to ambassador Kim Beazley’s residence in the city’s leafy north-western suburbs. There they sat down with CIA director John Brennan and some of his staff and James Clapper, US President Barack Obama’s director of national intelligence.

After the meeting Ms Bishop held a quick press conference in the entrance hall at the residence. The impact of the briefings was apparent. Ms Bishop’s cool reserve was intact, but seemed tempered by real anger.

Earlier in the day US Secretary of State John Kerry had revealed in TV interviews that bodies at the crash site had been moved by drunken separatists. There were reports of looting. Evidence was being tampered with.

Armed with the briefings, Ms Bishop and her team left the residence and took the  3½-hour train trip to New York.

For reasons of both politics and tragic circumstance, Australia is well placed to take the lead in the talks. With 37 of its citizens or residents killed, Australia’s interest is significant, but it is distant enough from European and transatlantic geopolitics to act as an honest broker between Ukraine, Russia and the US. 

It is a member of the Security Council, unlike the Netherlands, which has lost almost 200 citizens, and Malaysia, whose aircraft has been shot out over the sky, and Ukraine, in whose airspace the crime has been committed.

Lots more to read here.....

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/un-resolution-on-mh17-how-australia-achieved-what-other-nations-could-no...

[lightningdance]

Well at least she didnt fall flat on her face...........soooooooo funny

[Anonymous]

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@lionrose.7 wrote:

Those soldier as you call them are thugs, who held up a child toy for all to see,

Those soliers where the same ones that shot down the plane.

Those soldiers would not let the inspector in and fired shots in the air.

Those soldiers had no respect for the dead at all.

If one of mine was on that plane I would want some one to do some thing really quick.

300 dead and people using it to play their politicial games, how quick some forget

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add to that - drunken thugs

[debra9275]

She made a fairly good speech but she never would've had the opportunity to make that speech before the UN Security Council if her predecessors had not secured that very important seat. If we want to be seen as a leader in our region, we need that seat, although the current govt. treated gaining the seat as a joke ATT (I remember that very well)

I am glad they now see the importance of it and are making good use of it.

The rest of the security council could hardly disagree with what she said as she was correct, the Russians did a terrible thing and because of it 300 innocent people lay dead.