USA: Gutter diplomacy

US State Department official accuses Russia of intrusion into the affairs of Georgia and Moldova. Yet who is this official, and what authority does he have, to accuse Russia of anything?

Photo: USA: Gutter diplomacy

Nicholas Burns is the latest US diplomat to prove that diplomatic diplomas in the United States of America either come free in a packet of detergent or else are downloaded from the Net. This senior official of the US State Department made derogatory and insolent remarks during a Summit of the OSCE in Brussels yesterday.

During the meeting he stated that “Some countries” were using economic and financial pressure on Georgia and Moldova. If by “some countries” he means Russia, which it is perfectly evident he does, there follows a fitting reply.

To begin with, whether the Russian authorities decide to sell Russia’s natural resources at subsidised or market prices, is the prerogative of the Russian authorities, not Mr. Burns, neither the State Department, nor Washington. Anyway if the USA loves the market economy so much, what is the problem with Russia selling its resources at market prices, or does the USA distribute its own products for free? As usual, double standards and sheer hypocrisy. Gutter diplomacy.

Secondly, if Mr. Burns wishes to drink Moldovan wine or Georgia mineral water, then let him. However the Russian Federation has something called public health and safety standards and if such products are classified as a danger to public health, then it is up to the Russian authorities to retire them from distribution. Not Mr. Burns and his gutter diplomacy.

Mr. Burns, the famous gutter diplomat, failed to mention the treatment of Russian communities in Moldova and in Georgia, whose government has repeatedly threatened to settle the South Ossetia and Abkhazia questions by force, the Georgian government which is so popular and so wanted in these regions that South Ossetia, for example, has just voted massively in favour of independence.

And now that we are speaking about the rule of law and so on, “some” countries broke the UN Charter, the Geneva Conventions, the rules of diplomacy and indeed, every norm in international law by invading a sovereign nation without a casus belli, or be it, based upon lies and fabrications of a childish nature – Colin Powell’s “magnificent intelligence”, another example of gutter diplomacy.

“Some” nations have committed war crimes through their wholesale wanton act of slaughter in Iraq, choosing civilian targets to be destroyed by military hardware, dropping WMD in civilian areas, deploying weaponry which remained active after the conflict.

“Some” nations bypassed the United Nations Organization, deriding it as a League of Nations while refusing to take a sensitive issue through the UNSC, as international law and the UN Charter binds them to do.

“Some” nations claimed that Saddam Hussein was lying when he stated that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction and “some” nations said they knew where the weapons were. So where are they?

It would appear that Washington should be careful before casting stones, because however insulting or insolent its barrage of criticism may be, the international community knows very well that there is one pariah state among it: the United States of America, its gutter diplomats and its criminal clique of mass murderers at its helm.

Timothy BANCROFT-HINCHEY

PRAVDA.Ru