Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at UN
www.innercitypress.com/ban081presser010708.html
UNITED NATIONS, January 7 -- "The UN needs strengthened investigative capacity," Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Monday, following Inner City Press' question about the UN's $250 million no-bid contract with Lockheed Martin. While expressing again, seemingly with some exasperation, his commitment to transparency, Mr. Ban said he hopes that the UN's member states will consider how to provide more investigative firepower. But the General Assembly on December 21 formally expressed concern about Lockheed "single-source" contract, and called for an investigation.
Asked directly to respond to the Assembly's expression of concern, Ban said "I have answered that question two or three times." Each of these time were before the General Assembly's formal rebuke, however. Since then, the outgoing head of the UN's Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary questions has directly disagreed with Ban's assertion that the suspending competition was necessary. And at no point since the no-bid contract was announced on October 15 and Inner City Press began asking question has the contract been disclosed. Nor has the official who in a leaked April 2007 letter urged Lockheed's PAE unit for the contract, Jane Holl Lute, deigned to answer questions from the press. While some insiders opine that Ban is being mis-advised, the question remains, even after Ban's 55-minute press conference, where is the promised transparency? Video here, from Minute 50:17. Even the Reuters report on the press conference noted that "Ban himself has come under fire for awarding a $250 million contract to U.S. defense contractor Lockheed Martin to build five new peacekeeping base camps in Sudan's western Darfur region, which has been racked by five years of war, without competitive bidding. In December the U.N. General Assembly passed a resolution criticizing Ban for awarding the contract without competitive bidding." So what is Ban's answer to the Assembly's critique?
On Sudan more generally, Mr. Ban said he spoke with President Bashir "last Saturday." It is unclear if the discussion included the need to arrest the two Sudanese indicted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court, or the reported failure to comply with agreements and renewed fighting in South Sudan, regarding which Ban's spokesperson's office on January 6 told Inner City Press, "regarding your question on the redeployment of troops from southern Sudan, I checked with UNMIS, who are waiting to see whether there is any significant redeployment by January 9, which is the deadline for a significant level of redeployment to have happened. We'll see what happens by that date and react accordingly afterward." We'll see.
There were questions about the tribunal investigating the killing of Rafiq Hariri in Lebanon, in response to which Ban said that not all of the funding required for the tribunal has been received. One theory is that countries such as France are holding the funding to obtain leverage over Syria, one target of the investigation. Also on investigations, Ban was asked if he think the UN should be become involved in reviewing the assassination of Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan. Ban replied that Scotland Yard is already involved, and that no request to the UN has been received from the Pakistani government -- that is, from Pervez Musharraf, whose administration by most accounts would have to be one target of investigation.
Other questions arose about whether the Secretariat had received warnings from its head of security in Algeria prior to the recent bombing. Video here, from Minute 43:50. "I am not going to tell you anything on these internal procedures," Ban answered. What was that about transparency, again?
A question about Kosovo and the Ahtisaari status proposal was met with hesitation, perhaps because Ahtisaari also conducted a review after the bombing of the UN in Baghdad in 203. The Kosovo response also included a call from the Security Council members to help to implement the resolutions they pass -- to some, this appeared more related to Sudan and Darfur than to Kosovo.
Inner City Press also asked about Somalia, a topic not mentioned by Mr. Ban until it was raised as the last question in the press conference. Video here, from Minute 49:49. Ban's report in late 2007 said it was too dangerous to even send a UN assessment team. The Security Council disagreed, and has asked that the team be sent. Monday Ban answered that he is now "considering dispatching a technical assessment team early this year," and he insisted "there is no difference between me and the Security Council." But the Council didn't ask that the assessment be considered, but that it be performed. Other UN officials have called Somalia the world's worst humanitarian situation, worse that Darfur. So, some wondered of Monday's press conference, why until the end was Somalia not even mentioned? Watch this site.
