Ant\u00f3nio Guterres says UN has no clear route map to stop conflict and world institutions are \u2018caught in a time warp\u2019
\nWashington
\nThe UN secretary general, Ant\u00f3nio Guterres, has vowed he will not give up seeking a ceasefire in Gaza after the US wielded its veto to block the move at the security council on Friday, leaving the UN without a clear route map to stop the conflict lasting many months.
\nSpeaking at the Doha Forum in Qatar, Guterres did not directly criticise the US in his address but said the security council was \u201cparalysed by geostrategic divisions\u201d. He added world institutions \u201care weak and outdated, caught in a time warp reflecting a reality of 80 years ago\u201d.
\nGuterres spelled out why he had employed article 99 of the UN charter to use his extraordinary powers to force the security council to address the crisis in Gaza. \u201cI urged the security council to press to avert a humanitarian catastrophe and I reiterated my appeal for a humanitarian ceasefire to be declared.
\n\u201cRegrettably, the security council failed to do it, but that does not make it less necessary,\u201d he said. \u201cI will not give up.\u201d
\nAs it stood, he said the previously passed UN resolution calling for more humanitarian aid is not being implemented, straining the credibility of the UN. Guterres had expended every effort to build a momentum for a ceasefire, and the wreckage of Friday leaves diplomats with few short-term options.
\nPrivately in the short term, UN officials are focusing on trying to ensure that Israel fulfils commitments made last week to allow more aid into Gaza. However, some Arab foreign ministers think momentum for a ceasefire may only build ahead of Ramadan at the beginning of March.
\nMohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim al-Thani, Qatar\u2019s prime minister and foreign minister, also said he was not giving up on the negotiations to secure the release of Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners, the precondition that Israel and the US have set for a ceasefire.
\nHe said the previous willingness to negotiate does not currently exist, and urged both sides of the conflict to trust the process.
\n\u201cEach party aims to destroy the other. The openings are narrower than they were before the last party yet there is still an opening. We hope to go back to the agreement that we brokered a few days ago.\u201d But, he said, the continuation of the Israeli bombardment is narrowing the window, endangering the lives of Palestinian political prisoners and putting the hostages at risk.
\nThe Palestinian prime minister, Mohammad Shtayyeh, said Israel should be put under sanctions and complained the international criminal court had been dragging its feet in looking at the question of the Israeli occupation.
\nHe was reluctant to discuss solutions such as how Gaza might be administered at the end of the conflict but said Palestinians were under a duty to build a united front. \u201cToday we have no excuse whatsoever to be divided. It is a must that if we are to win we must not be divided.\u201d
\nAt further side meetings in the Doha Forum there were calls to move beyond the existing Palestinian Authority leadership, saying it had lost all credibility. Young Palestinians were less interested in two-state solutions as much as their rights, the forum heard.
\nPhilippe Lazzarani, the commissioner general of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said: \u201cThere is no doubt a ceasefire is needed if we are to bring an end to hell on earth\u201d.
\nHe said UNRWA is on the edge of collapse and if it does collapse it would be felt as an ultimate betrayal by the international community of the Palestinian people. He said the Palestinian people felt \u201cstripped of dignity, humiliated and psychologically broken\u201d. He said those Palestinians to which he had spoken felt they had no future in Gaza, and wanted to leave.
\n\u201cThe dehumanisation of Palestinians has made the unbearable bearable for the international community,\u201d he said.
\nThe Jordanian foreign minister, Ayman Safadi, said he was \u201cextremely disappointed\u201d by the US veto, and that there had been very blunt negotiations with the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, in Washington last Friday.
\nHe said\u201d: \u201cThe reality is that everyone is asking Israel to act within the international law. Israel is defying everyone: its own allies, including the US, and the UN. It is conducting this war with a degree of brutality. It feels it is unaccountable. It feels it can get away with murder. One country is defying the whole world, and the whole world is unable to do anything about it\u201d.
\nHe accused Israel of implementing a systematic policy of pushing Palestinians out of Gaza, and had created an \u201camount of hatred \u201cthat would \u201chaunt the region\u201d and \u201cdefine generations to come\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ant\u00f3nio Guterres says UN has no clear route map to stop conflict and world institutions are \u2018caught in a time warp\u2019 Washington The UN secretary general, Ant\u00f3nio Guterres, has vowed he will not give up seeking a ceasefire in Gaza after the US wielded its veto to block the move at the security council on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":373635,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[3218],"class_list":{"0":"post-373608","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-antonio-guterres"},"yoast_head":"\n