Liberman to UN: Never mind Israel — what about Syria, N. Korean nukes?

Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman on Thursday warned United Nations diplomats they risked becoming “irrelevant” by focusing on anti-Israel resolutions, while ignoring issues like the thousands killed in Syria and North Korea’s nuclear weapons.

Speaking to a host of foreign diplomats in a briefing at the UN hosted by the Israeli Ambassador Danny Danon, Liberman blasted the world body for a series of “anti-Israel” resolutions passed in recent weeks at the General Assembly and two especially contentious documents adopted by two UNESCO committees of resolutions that ignore Jewish ties to Jerusalem’s Temple Mount and other holy sites in Israel, while highlighting the Islamic connection.

He called these decisions “absurd and hypocritical” and said they demonstrated how the UN and especially the Security Council, was “not fulfilling its role and was irrelevant to events on the world stage.”

Meanwhile the United Nations, and other world bodies, have been “unsuccessful” in trying to solve issues related to world security and that it has “become less and less relevant” in the international sphere.

The defense minister said that the raging war in Syria — which has claimed the lives of over 300,000 according to UN figures since it began in 2011 — and other areas in the Mideast and Africa “where hundreds of people are killed on a daily basis,” should “concern everyone.”

Liberman also chided the UN for its failure to curb North Korea’s nuclear ambitions and its repeated defiance of international sanctions and diplomatic pressure.

“When you see what is happening in North Korea, where a madman leader has taken his citizens hostage and breaks the rules and international law regarding the use of nuclear power and other issues, and there’s no clear, productive counter-measure by the Security Council and the UN to stop it,” Liberman said, according to a press release sent out by the Defense Ministry on Thursday.

The UN Security Council voted Wednesday to further tighten sanctions on North Korea following months of diplomatic wrangling over how best to respond to North Korea’s latest nuclear test in September. Six-nation negotiations on dismantling North Korea’s nuclear program in exchange for aid were last held in late 2008 and fell apart in early 2009.

Ambassadors to the UN from Canada, Russia, Ukraine, India, Italy, Greece, Cyprus, Hollande, Bulgaria, Senegal, Rwanda, Singapore and Argentina participated in the meeting.