I have to say because I am a private citizen and a free man again - these are my personal views now. These sanctions resolutions are very disappointing. John Bolton 1/5/07
UPDATE: Argh ............ AIPAC has advised me these remarks were made off the record.
This is coming from their NY office not Ambassador Bolton's. I am taking the post down for now. I will, however, run his response to the effectiveness of 1701 and how closely the UN had been monitoring the agreements on
Lebanese Israeli border. And what, in the event of violation, was is being
done to enforce it;
I have to say I am going to give you a pretty discouraging answer on that point. I think that the enhanced UNIFIL which was agreed to with a lot of fanfare as part of resolution 1701 has not been successful in fully accomplishing the mission that we wanted to give to it. There's no doubt Syria and Iran have very substantially resupplied and rearmed Hezb'Allah. The UNIFIL people have done essentially nothing about it. Those shipments across the Lebanese Syrian border have been reported by the UN itself not something that comes just from the United States.
It could be we are coming to a day of reckoning here on resolution 1701 and whether the cessation of hostilities that was established between Hezb'Allah and Israel is going to remain acceptable.
I would hope the United States in the near future begins to take the next step that we made a conscious decision not to make in 1701 and that is disarming Hezb'Allah.
The unspoken premise of 1701 was first you stop them from getting external assistance by imposing an arms embargo but then the next step is to disarm Hezb'allah and we have not done anything on that. We are at the point , we have got to move to that second step.
Will update if there is a change.
