Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press in Africa
www.innercitypress.com/unsc1kabila060708.html
KINSHASA, June 7 – After being scoffed at by Sudan's president Omar al-Bashir, that the U.S. would demand compliance with the International Court of which it is not a mention, and after Chad's president Idriss Deby Itno did not even meet with them, the UN Security Council members on Saturday found an African leader who praised them, albeit behind closed doors. Joseph Kabila of the Democratic Republic of the Congo came in to the blue-ceilinged meeting room where the Ambassadors were waiting, shook hands and asked what the press was doing there. In the closed-door meeting that followed, Kabila said that he's found that arrest by the International Criminal Court of militia leaders, most of them his opponents, "is a very good thing," according to Inner City Press' sources in the meeting. It's not surprising that he would praise these arrests, of opponents in Ituri and most recently of Jean-Pierre Bemba, his main challenger in the last election.
After the meeting, Inner City Press asked French Ambassador Jean-Maurice Ripert, the leader for this leg of the Council's ten day cross-Africa tour, if the issue of the draw-down of the UN Mission in the Congo had come up. Of course, he said, but it will not happen soon, and should not happen abruptly. When the UN and its Council finally find a place they are wanted, they want to stay. The UK's John Sawers, who confirmed that he is leaving the delegation tonight then headed to London to prepare for a visit by Ban Ki-moon, bragged that his country has become the biggest aid donor to the DRC. "France can't be happy with that," it was suggested. Then they should raise their foreign aid, was the reply.
That the UN or at least its officials in the know are, however, looking beyond the DRC is exemplified by the plan by the long-time spokesman for MONUC, Kemal Saiki, to decamp for a similar position with the UN Mission in Darfur by mid-July. He will be replaced by Kevin Kennedy from UN Peacekeeping in New York, but only in September.
How will messages be crafted in the interim? For example, faced with NGOs' exposes that the number of displaced in North Kivu has been increasing so far this year, MONUC has tried to ascribe this to increased humanitarian access. According to MONUC, it's a positive and not negative story in the Eastern Congo. Being so Pollyanna is, however, a double-edged sword. If things are so good, the drawdown should begin. The Council's next stop will be in North Kivu -- watch this site.
Footnote: The press waited in the palace's first floor, where six air-conditioners cooled an open-air patio facing the river. There were portraits of Kabila, in nearly every room, and also once on the second floor of Patrice Lumumba. On the way into the compound, soldiers with automatic weapons demanded that no photos be taken.
And see, www.innercitypress.com/unsc1kabila060708.html
