Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at UN
www.innercitypress.com/ban2africa010808.html
UNITED NATIONS, January 8 -- Ban Ki-moon on Tuesday met with African ambassadors in a UN conference room. Hours before the meeting, it was said that Ban's opening remarks would be televised. Then this position was reversed, and the meeting declared closed. Inner City Press asked Mr. Ban on his way into the meeting, "What about the Office of the Special Advisor on Africa?" There was controversy in 2007 when Ban sought to consolidate this office and not appoint an African Under-Secretary-General to replace Legwaila Joseph Legwaila. (The UN's web site still lists him in place, though he left in April 2007). Ban started to answer the question, then was cut off by an aide, who another member of Ban's entourage identified as Yeocheol Yoon. "This is not the time," he said.
African Ambassadors interviewed by Inner City Press expressed some frustration at the meeting. "He spoke about climate change and other generalities," one Ambassador told Inner City Press. "When we asked him to set up a system where we can judge, at the end of the year, if he has done anything for Africa, he had no response." Given the mantra about results, this seems strange. After the meeting, Ban left surrounded by advisors, all of them smiling but providing no read-out. The decision to at the last minute cancel public access to Ban's remarks was made, sources tell Inner City Press, by "Ban's speechwriters." One wonders about the Secretariat's communications strategy.
Even getting basic answers that the UN should know is difficult. At Tuesday's noon briefing, on Africa, Inner City Press asked for UN response to the Ugandan military's statement that the UN has agreed to "flush out" Lord's Resistance Army leader Joseph Kony from Garamba Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The spokesperson didn't know, or wouldn't say. DRC envoy William Lacy Swing was still in the game, attending the meetings in Goma. Where then is his replacement Alan Doss, due in early January? The transition, Inner City Press was subsequently told, will happen by the end of the month. Click here for Inner City Press's article today on the UN backtracking on providing a briefing about its $250 million no-bid contract with Lockheed Martin, and the contract's proponent Jane Holl Lute's reported attempts to get George Clooney into Darfur.And see, www.innercitypress.com/ban2africa010808.html
