Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at UN
www.innercitypress.com/bansri5lanka042109.html
UNITED NATIONS, April 21 -- With the Sri Lankan government's ultimatum deadline having expired, the UN Security Council has still not heard from Ban Ki-moon's envoy Vijay Nambiar. Tuesday morning in front of the Council, Inner City Press asked Austrian Ambassador Thomas Mayr-Harting when the briefing would take place. “This week,” he said. “The issue is basically the timing, and the timing of Nambiar himself.”
Moments later, Inner City Press asked this month's Council president Claude Heller of Mexico if there had been any movement on the issue since what he told the Press midday on Monday. “Not yet,” Ambassador Heller said. “We are waiting for Nambiar to come.”
Nambiar left Sri Lanka days ago, after President Mahinda Rajapakse and his two brothers rebuffed a request for any pause in the military assault, and reportedly told Nambiar not to attempt any contact with the LTTE. Council sources say that Nambiar stopped in India on his way back, and that it is not clear that this stop really had anything to do with his Sri Lanka mandate. “Funny time for home leave,” one of them remarked. Another said, once you travel all that way, why not? Except for the timing.
Meanwhile, the UK Mission to the UN wishes to make clear that Gordon Brown's envoy to Sri Lanka Des Browne, whom President Rajapakse rejected, has in fact been trying to bring about an “urgent” briefing at the UN. The UK Mission, from which a comment on the legality of Sri Lanka's detention of UN staff is still awaited, sent Inner City Press this statement from or about Des Browne, “in case the below is of interest” --
Des Browne MP, the UK Prime Minister's Special Envoy for Sri Lanka, visited the United Nations headquarters in New York on 20 April. At the conclusion of his visit, Mr Browne said:
"The UK government, having made clear its deep concern at the deteriorating humanitarian situation in north-eastern Sri Lanka, strongly supports the work that the UN has been doing to try to arrange a UN-assisted civilian evacuation from the conflict zone.
"As the Secretary-General has said, UN staff must now be allowed into the conflict zone to facilitate relief operations and the evacuation of civilians.
"I welcome reports that over the past three days substantial numbers of civilians have escaped from the conflict zone. The UK will continue to work with its international partners to try to secure an immediate ceasefire to facilitate a civilian evacuation. I call on the LTTE to allow civilians to leave.
"I was reassured by my meetings here that the UN and our partners are focused on the need to improve conditions in the IDP camps through better access to medical facilities, transparent registration processes, international monitoring, and freedom of movement in and out of the camps. I urged them to provide UN supervision of the reception arrangements for civilians as soon as they cross the front line.
"All Sri Lankans have an interest in peace and prosperity in their country, and we will do what we can to help them achieve that goal. It is clear from my meetings today with senior UN staff, governments and NGOs that the voices of Tamil communities throughout the world are being heard and understood."
That communication is flowing as Browne's statement says it is is called into a question by a British Tamils press release complaining that the “British Government is yet to break its silence on the latest massacre, the human cost of which is comparable to the total casualty figures of the recent Gaza conflict.” Inner City Press has asked the UK Mission for the chance to interview Des Browne.
Not only is the UN's and Security Council's response to the “bloodbath on the beach” in Sri Lanka strikingly less than to Gaza, Darfur, Georgia or other recently conflicts -- even today April 21, there is at the UN and in the Council much more focus on a bureaucratic meeting on the North Korea sanctions committee than on Sri Lanka. Watch this site.
