unitex@rubbs.fidonet.org (unitex) (08/14/89)
UN SECURITY COUNCIL: -- TAKE 5
HERBERT S. OKUN (United States) said it was unfortunate that the Council
must spend its valuable time and resources to listen to "groundless complaints
by the representative of the Noriega regime". The document circulated by the
regime in calling for the meeting and the statement just made to the Council
"were full of fabrications and falsehoods".
The truth was simple and openly verifiable, and had been amply laid out
in a series of three extraordinary meetings of Foreign Ministers of the
Organization of American States (OAS) members in May, June and July, he said.
It was not far-fetched to conclude that the Noriega regime's manoeuvering
today was an effort to divert attention from what the OAS was trying to do.
On 7 May, he recalled, the Panamanian people had gone to the polls, and
despite intimidation, and massive efforts at fraud, the candidates opposed to
General Noriega had won by a margin of over 3 to 1. That outcome had been
documented by a host of international observers and the Catholic Church.
General Noriega proceeded to declare the elections annulled and to unleash
"goons" who had brutally beaten the electoral victors and had murdered one of
their bodyguards. The Noriega regime's response had been to claim that the
United States had bought the world press to publish falsified photos.
Governments throughout the Western hemisphere and the rest of the world
had condemned publicly and privately General Noriega's abuses of the rights
and persons of his own people.
He said the United States supported the efforts of an OAS mission
entrusted with the task of "promoting ... conciliation formulas for arriving
at a national accord that can bring about, through democratic mechanisms, a
transfer of power |in Panama~ in the shortest possible time ...".
(END OF TAKE 5)
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