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Friday, 22 December 2017 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}
Washington/United Nations (Reuters): US President Donald Trump on Wednesday threatened to cut off financial aid to countries that vote in favour of a draft United Nations resolution calling for the United States to withdraw its decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
“They take hundreds of millions of dollars and even billions of dollars, and then they vote against us. Well, we’re watching those votes. Let them vote against us. We’ll save a lot. We don’t care,” Trump told reporters at the White House.
The 193-member U.N. General Assembly will hold a rare emergency special session on Thursday - at the request of Arab and Muslim countries - to vote on a draft resolution, which the United States vetoed on Monday in the 15-member U.N. Security Council.
The remaining 14 Security Council members voted in favour of the Egyptian-drafted resolution, which did not specifically mention the United States or Trump but which expressed “deep regret at recent decisions concerning the status of Jerusalem.”
U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley, in a letter to dozens of U.N. states on Tuesday seen by Reuters, warned that Trump had asked her to “report back on those countries who voted against us.”
She bluntly echoed that call in a Twitter post: “The U.S. will be taking names.”
Several senior diplomats said Haley’s warning was unlikely to change many votes in the General Assembly, where such direct, public threats are rare. Some diplomats brushed off the warning as more likely aimed at impressing U.S. voters.
According to figures from the U.S. government’s aid agency USAID, in 2016 the United States provided some $13 billion in economic and military assistance to countries in sub-Saharan Africa and $1.6 billion to states in East Asia and Oceania.
It provided some $13 billion to countries in the Middle East and North Africa, $6.7 billion to countries in South and Central Asia, $1.5 billion to states in Europe and Eurasia and $2.2 billion to Western Hemisphere countries, according to USAID. Miroslav Lajcak, president of the General Assembly, declined to comment on Trump’s remarks, but added: “It’s the right and responsibility of member states to express their views.”
Jerusalem (Reuters): Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described the United Nations as a “house of lies” ahead of a vote on Thursday on a draft resolution calling on the United States to withdraw its recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
“The State of Israel totally rejects this vote, even before (the resolution’s) approval,” Netanyahu said in public remarks. “Jerusalem is our capital and we will continue to build there, and foreign embassies, led by the United States, will move to Jerusalem. It will happen.”
AFP: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday called on the world not to be swayed by US leader Donald Trump’s threat to cut off financial funding, during a key vote on a motion rejecting US recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
“I am calling on the whole world: never sell your democratic will in return for petty dollars,” he said in a televised speech in Ankara. Trump threatened to cut funding to countries that backed the measure.
