UN Security Council’s failure to deal with Palestinian question ‘inexcusable’: Pakistan

UNITED NATIONS, Nov 14 (APP): Reminding the UN Security Council of its primary responsibility to maintain international peace and security, Pakistan Friday criticized as “inexcusable” the 15-member body’s inability to act decisively to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“The Council’s inability to act effectively and decisively or even pronounce itself clearly on the situation in Palestine is inexplicable and frankly inexcusable,” Ambassador Maleeha Lodhi, the permanent representative of Pakistan to the UN, told the General Assembly.
Speaking in a debate on the annual report of Security Council, she also called for responding to the “raging violence and spreading chaos and disorder elsewhere in the Middle East”.
The Pakistani envoy said the Council’s failure to come to grips with the situation in Palestine “imperils peace and security and contributes to aggression and violence.”
“Importantly,” she said, “It reinforces the perceptions of selectivity. An impression of double standards in its approach will undermine the effectiveness of the Council. The Council must not only stake claims to be fair, unbiased and effective; it must be perceived by others to be so.”
Ambassador Lodhi expressed concern over the Security Council’s tendency to use Chapter VII of the Charter (specific powers granted to the Council to establish peace), without fully utilizing various tools available under Chapter VI (pacific settlement of disputes).
She said Pakistans main observation on the report was that the Council had functioned reasonably efficiently, as reflected by the number of meetings and outcomes it was able to agree on.
Still, the report continued to lack substance, and more than a fourth of the document consisted of compendia of meetings. There continued to be persistent shortcomings in the Councils work, she said.
The Security Council and the Assembly should work as partners in international peace and security; the Assembly could discuss vexed issues that would not yield a solution in the Council, Ambassador Lodhi added.