Beirut // Jordanian UN official Rima Khalaf resigned on Friday after the secretary general asked her to withdraw a report that accused Israel of being an apartheid state.
Ms Khalaf, under-secretary general and executive secretary at the UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (Escwa), told a news conference: “The secretary general asked me yesterday morning to withdraw (the report). I asked him to rethink his decision, he insisted, so I submitted my resignation from the UN.”
“We expected of course that Israel and its allies would put huge pressure on the secretary general of the UN so that he would disavow the report, and that they would ask him to withdraw it,” she said.
Secretary general Antonio Guterres had accepted Ms Khalaf’s resignation, his spokesman said.
“This is not about content, this is about process,” Stephane Dujarric said.
“The secretary general cannot accept that an under-secretary-general or any other senior UN official that reports to him would authorise the publication under the UN name, under the UN logo, without consulting the competent departments and even himself.”
On Wednesday, the United States demanded that Mr Guterres withdraw the report accusing Israel of imposing apartheid on the Palestinians.
Mr Guterres had distanced himself from the report, entitled Israeli Practices towards the Palestinian People and the Question of Apartheid.
The report concluded that “available evidence established beyond a reasonable doubt that Israel is guilty of policies and practices that constitute the crime of apartheid”.
Based in Beirut, Escwa is comprised of 18 Arab countries, according to its website which lists the state of Palestine as a full member, and works to strengthen cooperation and promote development.
“The United States is outraged by the report,” Washington’s UN ambassador Nikki Haley said on Wednesday.
“That such anti-Israel propaganda would come from a body whose membership nearly universally does not recognise Israel is unsurprising,” she said.
UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said “the report as it stands does not reflect the views of the secretary general” and was done without consultations with the UN secretariat.
One of the authors is Richard Falk, a former special UN rapporteur on Palestinian human rights.
Ms Haley described Mr Falk as “a man who has repeatedly made biased and deeply offensive comments about Israel and espoused ridiculous conspiracy theories”.
* Agence France-Presse
