| First y'gotta find the peace to keep, don't you? |
Non-aligned countries Thursday urged the U.N. Security Council to deploy peacekeepers to provide more targets help end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, citing warnings that the worsening bloodshed there has fueled violence in Iraq. Malaysia, the chair of the Non-Aligned Movement, also said it would issue a statement criticizing U.S. forces' abuse of Iraqi prisoners and urging a greater U.N. role in postwar Iraq. Separately, Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi condemned the beheading in Iraq of U.S. civilian Nicholas Berg. He called it part of a "cycle of violence" that included the prisoner abuse.
| Yup. He's riding the Cycle of Violence™ around the block again... |
Abdullah, in an opening speech the Non-Aligned Movement's emergency meeting on the Palestinians, said the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was the "root cause of much of the violence in the Middle East ... (and) elsewhere in the world."
| Which is why the bloodshed stretches from Mauritania to the Philippines... |
"The international community and the United Nations cannot afford to allow this issue to remain unresolved indefinitely," Badawi, chairman of the Non-Aligned Movement, told a key meeting of the 116-nation group. "The rising tensions in the Middle East following the war in Iraq have increased the need for, and importance of, rapid positive movement on the Israeli-Palestinian track." Malaysia hosted a meeting of the group's Committee on Palestine and members on the U.N. Security Council — Algeria, Angola, Benin, Chile, Pakistan and the Philippines. The countries issued a communique urging the Security Council to "authorize an international presence and establish a United Nations peacekeeping mission" in occupied Palestinian territories, including East Jerusalem.
| Yeah. That should help. I remember, about 20 years ago we had a UN-sanctioned peacekeeping mission in Beirut. Until Hezbollah blew up the barracks the Marines were staying in... |
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