{"id":24608,"date":"2018-12-07T02:23:58","date_gmt":"2018-12-07T02:23:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=24608"},"modified":"2018-12-07T02:23:58","modified_gmt":"2018-12-07T02:23:58","slug":"un-peacekeepers-confirm-israeli-report-of-tunnel-at-lebanon-border","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=24608","title":{"rendered":"UN peacekeepers confirm Israeli report of tunnel at Lebanon border"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\nUNITED NATIONS: Secretary-General Antonio Guterres again urged Syria to resolve \u201cgaps, inconsistencies and discrepancies\u201d in its declaration of chemical weapons after the global watchdog reported no progress on these outstanding issues.
The UN chief said in letter to the Security Council circulated Wednesday with the report from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons that he is \u201cdeeply concerned about the continued alleged use of toxic chemicals as weapons in the Syrian Arab Republic.\u201d
OPCW chief Fernando Arias said in the report that Syria\u2019s report still cannot be considered \u201caccurate and complete\u201d because of its failure to clear up \u201call of the identified gaps, inconsistencies and discrepancies.\u201d
He said OPCW investigators went to Syria in late September to investigate five alleged uses of chemical weapons in 2017.
Also on Wednesday, the UN spokesman said Guterres remains a \u201cbeliever\u201d in the UN despite US criticism that the world body had lost sight of its founding mission to advance peace.
In a major foreign policy address in Brussels, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo took a swipe at the UN and other multilateral organizations, suggesting they were outdated and catered to elites.
\u201cThe UN was founded as an organization that welcomed peace-loving nations. I ask: Today, does it continue to serve its mission faithfully?\u201d Pompeo said in the address on Tuesday.
Asked about Pompeo\u2019s remarks, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric acknowledged that there was a \u201clack of trust\u201d in international organizations but that Guterres strongly defended multilateralism.
\u201cThe secretary-general has been a believer in the United Nations and a believer in the multinational system for a long time now,\u201d said Dujarric.
He has been \u201cvery clear in addressing the lack of trust… that there exists in many international organizations,\u201d he said.
In his remarks, Pompeo took aim at UN peacekeeping missions that \u201cdrag on for decades, no closer to peace,\u201d and said UN climate deals were \u201cviewed by some nations as simply a vehicle to redistribute wealth.\u201d
\u201cAnti-Israel has been institutionalized. Regional powers collude to vote the likes of Cuba and Venezuela onto the Human Rights Council.\u201d
The renewed criticism followed the US administration\u2019s decisions to quit the Geneva-based Human Rights Council and cut funding to UN agencies and UN peacekeeping missions.
On Thursday, the UN embarked on two major peace efforts, bringing warring parties in Yemen to the negotiating table in Sweden while talks on the decades-old conflict in Western Sahara opened in Geneva.
Guterres, the former prime minister of Portugal, who took the UN helm in January 2017, has pushed for reforms to make the global body more responsive to world crises.
The Socialist politician has had a surprisingly smooth relationship with the administration of President Donald Trump, despite its criticism of the UN.
By far the UN\u2019s largest financial backer, the US provides for 20 percent of the operating budget and 28 percent of the separate peacekeeping budget.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

UNITED NATIONS: Secretary-General Antonio Guterres again urged Syria to resolve \u201cgaps, inconsistencies and discrepancies\u201d in its declaration of chemical weapons after the global watchdog reported no progress on these outstanding issues.The UN chief said in letter to the Security Council circulated Wednesday with the report from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons that…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":24609,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24608","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24608"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24608\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/24609"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}