A personal apology from the president appears to have done little to appease Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF - also known as Doctors Without Borders), which continues to call for an independent investigation into the U.S. airstrike that hit one of its hospitals and killed 22 civilians.
“We received President Obama's apology today for the attack against our trauma hospital in Afghanistan," Médecins Sans Frontières international President Dr. Joanne Liu said in a statement Wednesday night. "However, we reiterate our ask that the U.S. government consent to an independent investigation led by the International Humanitarian Fact-Finding Commission to establish what happened in Kunduz, how it happened and why it happened." Obama called Liu earlier Wednesday to offer his apology for the strike, the first time the United States apologized for the incident.
"When the United States makes a mistake, we own up to it, we apologize where appropriate, and we are honest about what transpired,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest said Wednesday when telling reporters about the call.
Last weekend, an airstrike carried out by U.S. forces hit the hospital and killed 12 Médecins Sans Frontières staff members and 10 patients, including three children. The strike was requested by Afghan forces under fire from the Taliban. But coalition commander Gen. John Campbell has said U.S. officials signed off on it and so are ultimately responsible.
Three investigations are underway by Pentagon, NATO and Afghan officials.
Médecins Sans Frontières has called the incident a war crime and has demanded an independent investigation.
The International Humanitarian Fact-Finding Commission is a 15-person body established in 1991 by the Geneva Conventions to investigate breaches of international humanitarian law. The United States and Afghanistan would both have to consent for the commission to investigate. In addition to Liu’s statement, on Thursday, Médecins Sans Frontières General Director Christopher Stokes reiterated the charity’s call for an investigation.
Médecins Sans Frontières wants the investigation “to get the facts of what happened, the truth,” Stokes told reporters in Kabul, according to The Associated Press.
Image Credit: Julie Jacobson/AP
In a vote presided over by President Obama, the U.N. Security Council has unanimously approved a historic resolution aimed at stopping the flow of foreign extremists to battlefields around the world.
It was rare session of the security council attended by heads of state – only the sixth of its kind in the organ’s 68-year history – all 15 member states voted for a US-backed resolution that seeks to step up the battle against “foreign terrorist fighters,” as President Obama described them.
The agreement from the world body’s highest panel was designed to tackle, Obama said, the new threat of the “unprecedented flow of fighters in recent years to conflict zones, most recently Syria and Iraq”.
He added: “These terrorists exacerbate conflicts; they pose an immediate threat to people in these regions; and as we’ve already seen in several cases, they may try to return to their home countries to carry out deadly attacks.”
Resolution 2178, which criminalizes traveling abroad to fight for extremist organizations as well as the recruiting for or funding of such groups, was adopted by all 15 members of the Security Council. According to Reuters: "It generally targets fighters traveling to conflicts anywhere in the world. It does not mandate military force to tackle the foreign fighter issue."
The U.N. resolution expresses concern that "foreign terrorist fighters increase the intensity, duration and intractability of conflicts, and also may pose a serious threat to their states of origin, the states they transit, and the states to which they travel."
President Obama, who was the first U.S. president to chair a Security Council meeting in 2009, thanked members for approving the historic measure, but warned that "a resolution alone will not be enough." The vote follows an address by the president in which he warned that inaction on extremism and other global threats could pull the world into "an undertow of instability."
"The words spoken here today must be matched and translated into action," Obama said.
The president said 15,000 fighters from 80 nations were thought to have traveled to Syria since the conflict there began.
The resolution is under Chapter 7 of the U.N. Charter, which makes it legally binding for the 193 U.N. member states and gives the Security Council authority to enforce decisions with economic sanctions or force.
Source: AP News
