UNITED NATIONS, January 9. /TASS/. The United States used pressure and blackmail to force the UN Security Council to change the text of its initial resolution on the Middle East conflict to incorporate a "literal license" to kill Palestinian civilians, Russian Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations Anna Yevstigneyeva told the UN General Assembly.
The UN General Assembly is holding a plenary session on Tuesday following the United States vetoing the Russia-initiated amendment to the UN Security Council resolution on the Middle East conflict that called for ending hostilities.
"The dirtiest instruments of pressure and blackmail were used by the United States, which hypocritically called them effective bilateral diplomacy. <…> After several days of arm-twisting, the United States has managed to totally distort the initial draft. Instead of calling for ceasing hostilities, the text now has a passage with a directly opposite meaning, i.e. calling for creating conditions for ceasing hostilities, or a literal license to Israel to kill Palestinian civilians in Gaza under the pretext that the mop-up operations in the enclave constitute the steps meant to create the above-mentioned conditions," she said.
According to Yevstigneyeva, Washington "engaged in an extremely dirty game" in a bid to "ensure utter freedom of operation in Gaza for its chief Middle East ally."
She stressed that Russia was guided by an "unconditional moral imperative" of saving people’s lives in Gaza and could not let the UN Security Council "sign on to the US-tailored document blessing the further extermination of the Gaza residents." That is why, in her words, Russia suggested an amendment "reviving the wordings from the initial UAE draft on the necessity of ending combat operations, which was backed by the Arab group."
The Russian diplomat said that she is sure that in vetoing this draft, Washington "has actually exposed itself to show that the real goal of all of its behind-the-scenes intrigues is not a compromise text, as the US delegation used to hypocritically say, but to force the UN Security Council to give a free hand to the Israeli leadership to take any, even the most inhumane, steps to mop up the Gaza Strip.".