04 Oct Weekday News Wrap: Thursday, October 4, 2012
04.10.12
|
1 Comment
- Turkey has struck back at Syria, after a mortar attack killed five Turkish civilians in a city close to the Syrian border. In an urgent meeting, NATO has urged Syria to respect international law. Turkey has also requested a response by the UN Security Council, but Russia asked for a day delay.
- Four UN Peacekeepers were killed in an ambush in West Darfur.
- At their next meeting in mid-October, Europe’s Foreign Affairs Ministers will reportedly consider tighter sanctions on Iran, including stricter limits on Iranian Central Bank assets in European jurisdictions. This move would make it harder for the Iranian Central Bank to defend the plummeting rial, which has been a cause of protests in Tehran yesterday.
- The Constitutional Chamber of Honduras’ Supreme Court has decided in a 4-1 judgment that the plan to create “private cities” is unconstitutional. The matter will now be considered by the full Court.
- Tokyo’s governor, whose decision to buy the Senkaku/Diaoyu Island triggered the tension between China and Japan, has poured oil on the fire with plans for infrastructure projects on the rocky islands.
- There is cautious optimism about renewed momentum in WTO negotiations.
- Negotiations on Laos’ WTO accession have reached the final stages.
- Foreign Policy posits that the reports of Al-Qaeda death have been exaggerated and that though the organization may be headless, its tentacles still pack a mean punch.
- ECHR Blog reports on the four new judges at the European Court of Human Rights, representing Bosnia, Croatia, Moldova and Russia.
- The UN is likely to hold a debate in November about the status of Palestine and whether to upgrade its current observer entity status to observer state status.
- In Tehran, Iranian police have clashed with protestors upset with the fall of the rial more than 40% in a week due to Western sanctions. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton says that these sanctions could be eased quickly with atomic cooperation.
Response… The Reuters report says that: “Having failed last year to win recognition of full statehood at the United Nations, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said last week he would seek a less-ambitious status upgrade at the world body to make it a “non-member state” like the Vatican.
It’s interesting to note, that when the Vatican’s bid for full membership in the UN failed in 2004, it asked for its own privileges to be upgraded to those already enjoyed by Palestine.
Compare the rules annexed to A/RES/52/250 (1998) with those annexed to A/RES/58/314 (2004) See also: “The Holy See backs off from its claim for full membership of the UN, settling for the rights already held by Palestine.”
So the debate is really only about the use of the word “state” instead of “entity”.