Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at UN
www.innercitypress.com/ban1valencia041008.html
UNITED NATIONS, April 10 -- While visiting Valencia back on November 17, the UN's Ban Ki-moon with the Vice-President of the Government of the Government of Spain "unveil[ed] a plaque at the site of the future United Nations Peacekeeping Logistics Base." That is how the UN's own web site describes it, in the caption to a photo of the event. There was and is only one problem: the UN's budgeting and decision-making body, the General Assembly, had not back in November approved any funding or future for such a logistics base in Valencia, and still has not approved it.
On April 7, in a press release issued at 6 p.m., the UN confirmed Inner City Press' earlier story that Ines Alberdi of Spain was being named the head of the women's agency UNIFEM. The next day for a follow-up, Inner City Press asked Ban's spokesperson Michele Montas about the connection between Spain's giving $700 million to the UN and Ms. Alberdi's appointment over India's Gita Sen, and the Valencia logistics base. From the transcript:
Inner City Press: And then one last thing that came up in the course of this. It seems that Peacekeeping is going to open a logistics base in Valencia? There's a photograph showing Mr. Ban meeting with the Vice-President of Spain. Does that compete with the Brindisi Center?
Spokesperson: It completes the Brindisi Center. It's a different set up. You can have the information on that very easily.
Actually, there's very little publicly available about this Valencia center or proposal, for reasons that soon became clear.
Inner City Press on April 7 e-mailed the Department of Peacekeeping Operations "as asked at today's noon briefing, what are the specifics of the planned peacekeeping logistics base in Valencia, Spain, when was it proposed and has it been approved by the General Assembly? If so, was it approved before November 2007?"
DKPO's spokesman replied on April 9 that
"The Valencia site will be utilized to provide ICT services to UN peace operations. In conjunction with current operations in UNLB (Brindisi), the creation of this secondary active telecommunications facility will mitigate the single point of failure risk that exists in our current infrastructure and will ensure the safety of peace operations' information/data assets in the event of a catastrophic incident. It will also provide continuous voice, data and video services to field missions in case of short-term disruptions. The proposal to establish this facility is with the General Assembly and it is our expectation it will be taken up in the second resumed session."
This "second resumed session" begins in May 2008. But why, then, did Ban jump the gun and unveil a plaque in Valencia in November 2007, which the UN captioned as Ban and the Vice President "unveil a plaque at the site of the future United Nations Peacekeeping Logistics Base." How can he be so sure? What will other member states think? Watch this site. (Here is a screen-shot of the page, in case it after this is changed.)
And see, www.innercitypress.com/ban1valencia041008.html
