Ex-minister questions UNSC legitimacy

Source: Press TV
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/197283.html

The UN Security Council (UNSC) has lost its moral credit and Britain and its western allies have been using it in an organized violation of the international law, a former British minister says.

In an attack uncharacteristic of a western politician on what Iran and other countries have called an unjust world order, newly-resigned British International Development Minister Clare Short said the Israeli Regime did not have a chance of usurping Palestinian territories if the international law was truly implemented.

Short told the BBC Persian's Page 2 show on September 1 that the west also did not need to support dictators in the Middle East including former Egyptian despot Hosni Mubarak if it did not need to support the illegal acts of the Israeli occupiers.

She said the US and its western allies use the UN Security Council as a tool in line with their own interests and not as a representative body to safeguard the well-being of all nations.

“The problem is the UN Security Council is unbalanced. The council does not represent or support the interests of all countries. The US has full control over the body and Britain always follows the US lead. Therefore the council does not have a reasonable structure and is not effective enough,” Short said based on the Persian translation of her remarks on BBC Persian.

“Everyone knows that the UN Security Council has lost its moral leverage, yet in many countries including the developed world UN agencies are still highly respected,” she added.

In the BBC Persian show that was meant to discuss the NATO presence in Libya, Short pinpointed oil as the root cause of the west's interventions in the Middle East.

“I think the west tries to intervene in the Middle East because it has rich oil reserves and that the US considers access to energy resources in line with its national interests. The Middle East would have a completely different fate if there were no oil,” she said.

The former minister who resigned over the war in Iraq, further underlined the main reason for the west's willingness to keep close ties with regional countries including the Saudi Arabia is having access to their energy resources adding western powers neglect the very human rights principles they claim to support to keep energy resources within the reach.

“Let's not forget that the Saudi Arabia's record of human rights, democracy and women's rights is in many respects against what the west supports, yet the west's interest in friendship with Saudi Arabia shows oil is an important factor,” she added.

Short also referred to the Palestinian-Israeli issue in the Middle East saying that is not a conflict fueled by oil.

She said sowing discord in the region is a method that helps the west advance its goals adding the Palestinian issue could be solved differently if it did not have wider implications for the west.

Following her candid remarks, the BBC presenter asked her what did she propose as an alternative as she is “openly questioning the current world order”, particularly concerning the policies in the Middle East.

She answered that the west is not observing the “rules of the game”, which she identified as “the international law”, in the Middle East saying regional conflicts should be left at the discretion of regional countries and they will be able to solve their problems.

“If the rules were respected Israel could not occupy the Palestinian lands and there was no need for the west to support regional dictators in Egypt and other countries to defend Israel,” she concluded adding if there was no foreign intervention regional nations could taste stability and use their wealth on the welfare of their people.

“The policies of the west are stupid and cause tensions and hatred that lead to the creation of organizations similar to al-Qaeda. If the west respected values such as international law and human rights which it supports, we could see a better Middle East but as long as no such change happens it will go on to be explosive and troublesome,” she said.