Three hours into the UN Security Council's emergency meeting about the Korean peninsula, diplomats emerged to describe the split between the positions of US, Japan, South Korea and other Western countries and that of Russia and China.
As Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin put it on December 18, when the US Mission to the UN rebuffed his request for a Saturday meeting of the Council, both sides should be told to show restraint -- implying that South Korea should not go forward with its military exercises now scheduled for Monday or Tuesday.
The US maintains that South Korea's exercises are only self defense, and that any Council statement should lay the blame on the DPRK.
Meanwhile, even Russia and China do not fully agree. Inner City Press is told that while Russia wants to refer “relevant statements” of Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, China says it doesn't agree with some of these statements.
Reporters sighed that such consultations could go on well into the day. The television at the media stakeout was turned to NFL football, Giants versus Eagles. A lunch break was taken, with a US Mission staffer returning with two bags of food. Susan Rice, unlike Churkin, never emerged from the Chamber. Watch this site.
1st update: during the lunch break, several UN officials came out of the Council chamber: Lynn Pascoe, Fink Heysom and Kim Won-soo. Some wondered, where IS Ban K-moon?
Update of 2:45 pm: a Western diplomat emerges and tells the Press that now there are two texts, the Russian one (which the Westerner says "doesn't put any blame on the DPRK") and another text, which blames DPRK for "the incidents of November" shelling and even the Cheonan sinking. Big gap.
Source: The United Nations
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