Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at UN
www.innercitypress.com/un4nepal030408.html
UNITED NATIONS, March 4 -- In the wake of the deadly crash of a UN Mission in Nepal helicopter, at the UN's noon briefing on March 4, Inner City Press asked the spokesperson to confirm or deny reports of a previous UNMIN helicopter incident. Inserted by the UN into the subsequent transcript was that "the Spokesperson later added that there had been no previous recent incident in Nepal with an UNMIN helicopter."
But on the website of Nepal's Civil Aviation Ministry, a complaint was posted on February 11, 2008 that "recently, one of the Mi-17 helicopters operated by UNMIN was involved in an incident near Okhuldunga, as reported by some dailies. Strangely, despite the fact that the aircraft is on the Russian civil registration, Nepal (State of Occurrence) has not instituted an investigation in this incident, as required by the Annex 13."
Minister Leela Mani Paudyal responded that "I have taken inquiring on the issues including the UNMIN accident and will post response after getting clear recommendation from CAAN which I am waiting. The papers forwarded to the Ministry about that incident were just papers prepared by UNMIN that too was received when I personally asked CAAN to produce me." Did the Nepali minister mis-speak about UNMIN papers about an incident? Or are different (but undisclosed) definitions of incident at play? Watch this site.
