Former UN Mideast Envoy Says UN Subservient To U.S., Israel

Taken from Haaretz, Israel, 13/06/2007
By Reuters

A former UN Middle East envoy quit his job last month with bitter allegations that UN policy in the region had failed because it was subservient to U.S. and Israeli interests, a newly leaked document shows.

In a confidential end of mission report, Alvaro de Soto poured scorn on the Quartet negotiating group of the United States, Russia, European Union and United Nations, and suggested the world body should pull out.

De Soto, a Peruvian diplomat who formerly worked on El Salvador, Cyprus and the Western Sahara, spent two years on the Middle East before resigning in May, ending a 25-year UN career. He was replaced by Briton Michael Williams.



His scathing 53-page farewell, addressed to a handful of top UN officials made clear he left in frustration that he was not being listened to.

In the document dated May 5, he railed at restrictions he said were placed on him by UN headquarters against talking to the Hamas-led Palestinian government and to Syria.

De Soto condemned economic sanctions imposed by Israel, the United States and the EU on Hamas after it won Palestinian elections last year and said their effective endorsement by the Quartet had had "devastating consequences" for Palestinians.

"The steps taken by the international community with the presumed purpose of bringing about a Palestinian entity that will live in peace with its neighbor Israel have had precisely the opposite effect," he wrote.

"Even-handedness has been pummeled into submission in an unprecedented way since the beginning of 2007."

Side-Show
De Soto sharply criticized the Islamist Hamas movement for its charter advocating the destruction of Israel, as well as Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, who opposes Hamas, for weak and ineffectual leadership.

But he also charged that Israeli policies seemed "perversely designed to encourage the continued action by Palestinian militants." The goal of parallel Israeli and Palestinian states could be slipping away, he warned.

De Soto blasted what he called "the tendency that exists among U.S. policy-makers ... to cower before any hint of Israeli displeasure and to pander shamelessly before Israeli-linked audiences."

But much of his criticism was directed at the United Nations itself, where, he said, "a premium is been put on good relations with the U.S. and improving the UN's relationship with Israel."

"I don't honestly think the UN does Israel any favors at all by not speaking frankly to it about its failings regarding the peace process," De Soto said.

The Peruvian diplomat said UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon should "seriously reconsider" continued membership in the Quartet, which he said had become a "side-show" and "pretty much a group of friends of the U.S."

De Soto said he regretted that his advice to UN headquarters had gone unheeded. "I concluded that my uphill effort was not going to succeed," he said.

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Dr de Soto is a good man, he is an honest man. He is on an endless list of current and former UN spokesmen to condemn Israel – that are left fuming by the lack of action taken place by it’s security members. In an article written in the UK newspaper The Guardian, on 13.06.07 he warned that international hostility to the Palestinian Hamas movement, now fighting in the bitterly escalating civil conflict in Gaza, could have grave consequences by persuading millions of Muslims that democratic methods do not work.

"The steps taken by the international community with the presumed purpose of bringing about a Palestinian entity that will live in peace with its neighbour, Israel, have had precisely the opposite effect," he wrote in his confidential internal memo. The US and Israel had both erred in seeing Hamas as a passing phenomenon, the envoy argued. "Hamas is deep-rooted, has struck many chords, including its contempt for the Oslo process, and is not likely to disappear," he wrote. "Erroneous treatment of Hamas could have repercussions far beyond the Palestinian territories because of its links to the Muslim Brotherhood, whose millions of supporters might conclude that peaceful and democratic means are not the way to go."

In a key passage that may already have been overtaken by the rapidly deteriorating situation, Mr De Soto wrote: "Hamas is in effervescence and can potentially evolve in a pragmatic direction that would allow for a two-state solution - but only if handled right. "If the Palestinian Authority passes into irrelevance or collapses (as now seems likely) calls for a one-state solution to the conflict "will come out of the shadows and enter the mainstream."

It would need a "Sherlockian magnifying glass," to find allusions to Israel's failure to comply with its "road map" obligations. "No amount of magnification" would find references to its responsibilities as an occupier to ensure the welfare of Palestinian civilians." On the UN and Israel he wrote: "We are not a friend of Israel if we allow it to fall into the self delusion that the Palestinians are the only ones to blame, or that it can continue blithely to ignore its obligations under existing agreements without paying an international diplomatic price in the short-term and a bitter price regarding its security and identity in the long-term."