Because Russia and China typically objected to expanding the Council’s writ, I turned to the individuals who represented the imperiled West African countries. After the ambassadors from Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone filed into a small conference room at the US Mission, I expressed my sympathies and asked them how they were holding up. Some 23 million people lived in their three countries, and the epidemic did not discriminate; the ambassadors’ immediate families were in grave danger. I told them I was considering convening the Security Council on the epidemic, and that the US was prepared
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