Blinken Denies US Thwarting Diplomatic Efforts To End Gaza Fighting

Blinken Denies US Thwarting Diplomatic Efforts to End Gaza Fighting

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken argued on Tuesday that the United States was not standing in the way of diplomacy after it rejected for the third time a UN Security Council statement calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza

MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 18th May, 2021) US Secretary of State Antony Blinken argued on Tuesday that the United States was not standing in the way of diplomacy after it rejected for the third time a UN Security Council statement calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.

"With regard to the United Nations, we're not standing in the way of diplomacy. On the contrary, we're exercising it virtually non-stop. The question is, would any given action or any given statement actually advance the goal of ending the violence and moving to a better place?" he told a press conference.

He insisted that if the US thought, going forward, "that there's something, including at the United Nations, that would actually effectively advance the objective, we would be for it."

Israel thanked the US for rejecting the statement that would have demanded de-escalation in the weeklong violence between Israeli forces and the Palestinian group Hamas. Ten people have died in Israel and 220 in Gaza, almost a quarter of them children.