Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at UN
www.innercitypress.com/dpko1leroy030209.html
UNITED NATIONS, March 2 -- With UN Peacekeeping under fire from Sudan to Congo, its two largest missions, agency head Alain Le Roy told the Press on March 2 that there is "good news" in Timor L'Este and Haiti, elections to be held in Afghanistan, pay-offs and run-offs averted in Chad. Inner City Press asked if Chad's president Idriss Deby had tried to charge the UN for the airstrips the European Union mission has built in his country, as several Security Council ambassadors have said in confidence.
Le Roy said it was difficult, but the outcome is that Chad will re-claim some of the airstrips built by the EU. We do not pay, he said. But at a closed-door Troop Contributing Country meeting in late 2008, several member states complained that Chad was charging landing fees. Transparency only goes so far at the UN.
Le Roy's main pitch was about Sudan, in the run-up to the expected indictment of Omar al-Bashir for war crimes on March 4. Le Roy said the UN plan to keep moving peacekeepers in, from Egypt and Senegal, even Thailand and Nepal, to reach 80% staff-up by June.
Inner City Press asked about the protest over the weekend by the UN's top man in Sudan, Ashraf Qazi, claiming he was misquoted that he gave information against Bashir to the International Criminal Court. Le Roy clarified that only "regular" information could be provided, reports already completed, "mostly" for the Security Council.
Inner City Press had asked about the ICC's case against Congolese militia leader Thomas Lubanga, in which UN Peacekeeping gave information it demanded be withheld from the defense. These did not sound like "regular" reports. Nor would Le Roy confirm or deny, as Inner City Press requested, that the Congolese government of Joseph Kabila in March 2007 asked the UN to help arrest indicted war criminal Bosco Ntaganda, who is now working with rather than against Kabila's rag-tag forces. Again, transparency only goes so far at the UN.
Still and all, Le Roy is one of the better informed UN Under Secretaries General who are trotted out to brief the Press. Inner City Press has asked UN spokespeople about reports that Poland plans to pull out of UN peacekeeping missions, without any on-the-record response. Le Roy on March 2 said that Poland plans to stay in Chad until October, and that its reasons for pulling out are financial.
The reality is that the UN pays countries for their peacekeepers. In fact, these payments are reported to have played a role in the deadly coup attempt in Bangladesh. The border guards who are said to have plotted the coup "make about $100 a month. Their resentment has been heightened by Army officers heading the border guards, who do not participate in United Nations peacekeeping missions, which bring additional pay."
Thus, UN Peacekeeping can and does impacts in countries well beyond those in which it has formal peacekeeping missions. There have been no public updates on sexual abuse charges pending against contingents from Morocco, Sri Lanka and India. The previous official on the "zero tolerance" beat, Jane Holl Lute, is now in line to be the number two at the UN Department of Homeland Security. (Her "war czar" husband recently spoke at the University of North Florida.) Where are the updates? Once again, transparency only goes so far at the UN.
And see, www.innercitypress.com/dpko1leroy030209.html
