Israel complains to Ban about "automatic majority" in UN

Oct 23, 2009, 10:44 GMT

Jerusalem - Israel complained to Secretary General Ban Ki-moon about the 'hypocrisy,' 'prejudices,' and 'automatic majority' against it in UN bodies, and urged him not to refer a damning report about its Gaza war to the Security Council or General Assembly.

In a telephone call with Ban overnight, Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman complained that a 'distorted international reality has been created in which at any international forum there is an automatic majority of states which are very far from being concerned about issues of human rights,' according to a statement from his office Friday.

Mentioning by name Cuba, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, he charged that the automatic condemnations of Israel by states with poor human rights records made 'the international system into one characterized by hypocrisy and one which acts according to prejudices.'

'One must think about how to correct this situation in order for there to be a credible and balanced international system,' Lieberman, of the ultra-nationalist Israel Beiteinu party, told Ban according to the Hebrew statement.

The far-right minister also slammed the Palestinians for talking with Israel on the local level, while fighting it in international forums.