Photo by
Avi Ohayon/GPO on 23 September, 2011
UN Secretary General: UN Impartiality Means ‘Treating All States Equally’
By
TPS
• 28 August, 2017
Jerusalem, 28 August, 2017 (TPS) -- The United Nations must maintain its impartiality and can not single out any nation, Secretary General António Guterres said Monday as he made his first visit to Israel since taking office in January.
Meeting with President Reuven (Ruby) Rivlin, Gutterres said he was “very keen on stressing the values of the [United Nations] Charter, and the very important value of the Charter, impartiality.”
That, said, Gutterres means “treating all states equally.”
“I am totally committed to that, in my actions and in everything I can do for the organization I lead,” he added.
Gutterres, who visited the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial earlier in the day, said that calls for the destruction of the State of Israel were a “form of modern anti-Semitism.”
At the same time, he added that there have been occasions when he disagreed with the positions of the government of Israel or any other government, but he noted that disagreements are “absolutely normal in a society where many of your citizens have exactly the same expressions of opinions.”
The UN Secretary General said he would “always be very frank in his dialogue with the State of Israel in trying to find ways for peace to be possible in this region, but we will always be very committed to make sure anti-Semitism doesn’t prevail and that equality in the treatment of all states is fully respected.”
During their working meeting, Rivlin urged the Secretary General to end “the discrimination against Israel in some branches of your organization.”
The two also discussed efforts to obtain the release of the bodies of two Israeli soldiers killed in action during the 2014 Gaza War, and of three Israeli civilians who crossed over into the Strip, as well as the role of UNDOF along the northern border of Israel, and the importance of restoring confidence as a central component of Israeli-Palestinian discourse.
Later in the day, Gutteres met with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu who stressed Israel’s concerns about Iran’s growing presence in Syria.
“Iran is busy turning Syria into a base of military entrenchment and it wants to use Syria and Lebanon as warfronts against its declared goal to eradicate Israel,” Netanyahu said. “It is also building sites to produce precision-guided missiles towards that end in both Syria and in Lebanon. This is something Israel cannot accept. This is something the UN should not accept. And I intend to speak to you at great length about this, and other tasks that I believe are important for the makings of peace and security in the world.”
