Westerners criticize south africa for anti-west, anti-kosovo and anti-human rights ag

[Crvena zvezda]

Alarm at South Africa's UN votes
April 20, 2007 1:48 AM
South Africa: Nelson Mandela's South Africa projected an image of a virtuous nation reconciling with a brutal white minority government and serving as an enduring symbol of resistance to political oppression.
But South Africa's brief debut this year on the UN Security Council has tattered its reputation. It has prompted human rights activists to condemn President Thabo Mbeki for abandoning the human rights principles that defined the anti-apartheid movement and for routinely siding with some of the world's worst human rights abusers.
In just over three months, South Africa has used its position on the council to try to block discussion of human rights abuses in Myanmar and Zimbabwe. It initially backed Iran's efforts to evade sanctions for defying UN demands to subject its nuclear programme to greater scrutiny.
And it reacted coolly to Kosovo's bid for independence, lending its backing to a Russian effort to deny Kosovo's president the right to address the UN Security Council in its formal chambers.
"It's a sad perversion of the anti-apartheid struggle," said Kenneth Roth, executive director of the New York-based Human Rights Watch. "Mandela understood that the anti-apartheid struggle was a human rights movement and clearly stood with the human rights victims of the world."
South Africa's UN ambassador, Dumisani Kumalo, said his government remained faithful to the values of the anti-apartheid movement. He said South Africa had now embraced a pragmatic foreign policy that urged such countries as Myanmar, Sudan and Zimbabwe to resolve their disputes through negotiations.
"We're not into 'who is to blame'," Kumalo said. "We believe in resolving problems . . . We resolved our differences between black and white people in South Africa."
Kumalo said his government was seeking to counter "an imbalance of global power" in the security council, where he said the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China use their authority to attack enemies and to shield friends. The council should stick to resolving international conflicts and not abuse its role by bullying small countries or expanding its authority into areas beyond its jurisdiction, including human rights, he said.
South Africa's approach has bolstered its standing among the Third World bloc - including the influential Group of 77 and the Non-Aligned Movement - that has long bridled at the power of the council's five heavyweights. It has strengthened its case within Africa for a permanent security council seat if the council is ever expanded.
But it has also set Pretoria on a collision course with the US and its closest European allies, undercutting their efforts to use the UN to constrain Iran's nuclear programme and highlight human rights abuses.
South Africa posed a rare challenge to the council's five powers by pressing them to abandon an agreement to impose a ban on Iranian arms sales and an asset freeze on Iran's top military commanders. The South African initiative failed, and Pretoria ultimately voted in favour of the sanctions. South Africa's more assertive approach has alienated some of its traditional allies in the human rights community and earned praise from countries accused of committing large-scale atrocities. South Africa "is a great nation; it's a role model for us", said Sudan's UN ambassador Abdalmahmood Abdalhaleem Mohamad.

[Franze]

Supporting Russia in Kosovo, and why?

[Crvena zvezda]

Originally Posted by Peter

Supporting Russia in Kosovo, and why?

South Africa seems to be a country that supports the idea of territorial integrity of states. Africa is filled with seperatist movements especially in sub-saharan africa and if a precedent (like Kosovo) is set it will mean many more wars in Afrcia and millions of African refugees heading for South Africa and probably civil war in South Africa as the refugees start acting up.

[Crvena zvezda]

Serbs say South Africa sympathetic on Kosovo case

Thu 26 Apr 2007, 12:43 GMT
[-] Text [+]

By Douglas Hamilton
BELGRADE (Reuters) - Serbia has persuaded at least one member of a 15-nation U.N. Security Council fact-finding mission to change his mind about Kosovo's demand for independence, according to Serb aides on Thursday.
They quoted South Africa's U.N. ambassador Dumisani Kumalo as saying that, after hearing the arguments of Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica and President Boris Tadic, he no longer views the issue as a straight choice between independence or not.

"Until now an opinion prevailed that there were just two solutions," Kumalo said, citing Serb insistence on sovereignty versus a plan by U.N. envoy Martti Ahtisaari giving virtual independence to Kosovo as demanded by its 90 percent Albanian majority.
"Now, after what you told us and explained, we see things differently," he said, according to top presidential and prime ministerial aides Slobodan Samardzic and Vladeta Jankovic, quoted by the official agency Tanjug.
Kumalo did not speak to reporters. In South Africa, foreign ministry spokesman Ronnie Mamoepa told Reuters his country was formulating its views on Kosovo. "Negotiations are still in process. We are in a process of consultation," he said.
The mission, which continues on Friday and Saturday with visits to Kosovo Albanian communities and Serb enclaves, is part of a test of wills between the West on the one hand and Serbia and Russia on the other over Ahtisaari's plan.
It was instigated by Russia, a permanent Security Council member with veto power, which advocates more time for talks to find a compromise solution for Kosovo.
SEE FOR THEMSELVES
The West has concluded compromise is impossible, and diplomats say the United States, Britain and France are confident that a majority of Council members will back the Ahtisaari plan, unless Russia imposes its veto.
Russia wants non-permanent Council members to see Kosovo for themselves first. The delegation includes envoys from Congo, Panama, Ghana, Indonesia, Peru and Qatar -- countries with no involvement in the wars over the breakup of Yugoslavia.
Serbia and Kosovo Albanians are vying for the sympathy of the Council states, which may be asked to decide in the next month or two whether Serbia's insistence on territorial sovereignty overrules the wishes of its majority population.
Diplomats say there is no "third way" out of the impasse. But some analysts believe Kosovo might be partitioned, so that Serbs in its northern quadrant stay in Serbia.
The West and Albanians oppose formal partition, but there are clear geographical, administrative and ethnic lines differentiating the Serb northern tier from the Albanian centre.
Thousands of Serbs displaced from the province gathered on the Kosovo border as the 15 ambassadors began their tour.
Goran Savovic of the association of expelled and displaced from Kosovo said they were relaxed and happy to meet old friends not seen since they fled the province in 1999. But there was no word on whether the U.N. ambassadors would visit them.
The United Nations has run Kosovo since June 1999, when NATO drove out Serb forces to halt the killing of ethnic Albanian civilians during an insurgency. About 10,000 Albanians were killed and a million temporarily driven out.
Albanians in turn took revenge on Serbs and up to 200,000 fled, although the figure is disputed. Some 100,000 remain, half living in isolated enclaves under NATO protection.

© Reuters 2007. All