Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at UN
www.innercitypress.com/sc1jan010908.html
UNITED NATIONS, January 9 -- A standoff about Darfur took place at the Security Council on Wednesday, in which UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations chief Jean-Marie Guehenno was met with disbelief by at least one Council member, Libya. Speaking about the January 7 attack on UN peacekeepers in West Darfur, Guehenno told the Council that the local Sudanese Armed Forces area commander contacted both the UN and the African Union immediately after the attack and took responsibility for it. In response to Inner City Press' question about this call, Guehenno said Sudan's rationale for shooting was that the convoy "was not identified as a UNAMID convoy." Video here, from Minute 6:56.
Sudan's UN Ambassador beginning on Tuesday disputed responsibility, pointing the finger at the rebels of the Justice and Equality Movement. And Wednesday outside the Council chamber, asked about the Council's failure to issue a press statement on the attack, and about who was responsible for the attack, Libya's Ambassador Giadalla A. Ettalhi, president of the Security Council for January, said, "This point is not agreed by all the parties. They need more investigation, that was expressed by some members." Video here, from Minute 3:16. French Ambassador Jean-Maurice Ripert told reporters, off-camera, that only one country was blocking the press statement on Darfur, and one on Lebanon as well. This was clarified by staff to mean Libya. Some reporters mused that, given that it is the Council president who must come before the cameras and read out the Council's press statements, Libya is particularly opposed to reading out statements criticizing Sudan, and condemning a two-rocket attack on Israel.
[According to AFP, in Khartoum on Thursday, Sudan's defence minister Abdel Rahim Mohammed Hussein made the admission that "the army wasn't informed of the convoy's itinerary and before entering Tine (in Darfur) soldiers fired warning shots without knowing the vehicles were from UNAMID."]
Also on Darfur, U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, rumored in today's Washington Post to want to run for president of Afghanistan, said that Sudan's intransigence is one reason that countries are not stepping forward to offer the helicopters the UN is requesting. Unexplained is the fact that the European Union force for Chad and Central African Republic is also delayed by the failure to contribute any helicopters, even though the Chad and CAR presidents have not laid down conditions. Sudan for its part argues that there is a double standard, in which Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon quickly condemned the attack on peacekeepers in Darfur, and blamed the government for it, while not issuing a similar statement about the attack on UN peacekeepers from Ireland in Lebanon. Western diplomats quickly countered that the Council is working on a statement about Lebanon, which they say Libya is blocking, but that does not address the alleged double standards of the Secretariat.
Footnote: also on Secretariat statements, it is said that in the wake of Ban Ki-moon's statement regretting the government of Sri Lanka having declared an end to its ceasefire with the Tamil Tigers, Sri Lanka's ambassador to the UN is in hot water with his capital, that he should have done more to procure such statements following Tamil Tiger attacks, or have found a way to modulate Ban Ki-moon's more recent statement. Georgia, for example, managed to avoid a Ban Ki-moon statement during the crackdown on protests there. At the UN, the politics and timing of statements are among the currencies of the realm.
