Brazil slams UN for failure to stop Mideast violence

BRAZIL: Brazil’s president on Tuesday slammed the United Nations and United States for failing to get a resolution passed to stop violence in Gaza, and called for an emergency UN session to do so.

President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said on a visit to Brazil’s northeast that “what has been made clear is that the UN does not have the strength to pass a resolution that can achieve peace in that place.

“And it doesn’t have the strength because the United States has veto power and that is why things do not get done,” charged Lula, whose country aspires to a seat on a reformed UN Security Council.

Lula said he had instructed Foreign Minister Celso Amorim to contact France about the possibility of an emergency UN meeting on the violence.

From Texas, US President George W. Bush spoke with Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas and prime minister Salam Fayyad to discuss efforts for a “sustainable ceasefire” in the Gaza Strip, US officials said.

But Brazil’s president flatly charged US efforts at mediating “are not working.”

“We are going to work and make a huge effort, with other countries, so that those people stop killing each other,” Lula said.

The Security Council on Sunday passed a non-binding statement that urged an immediate end to violence in Gaza and urged the parties “to stop immediately all military activities.”

But Israeli officials have warned that the bombing raids which have killed at least 368 Palestinians, could continue for weeks, while Hamas militants remained defiant, firing more deadly rockets into Israel and threatening to step up the attacks.

Lula said that “it is true Hamas is a very radical group. But it is also true that Israel’s military might next to Palestine’s is like one person standing there with a match while the other has a bomb, just so much greater.”

BRASILIA, Friday, AFP