Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at UN
www.innercitypress.com/unsc1may1dprk052509.html
COPENHAGEN, May 24, updated NYC 6 pm -- As North Korea bragged about its underground nuclear test, attention shifted to the United Nations in New York, which was closed on Monday for the American Memorial Day holiday but where an emergency session of the Security Council is to expected later Monday.
At 2 a.m. Monday in New York, the Japanese mission sent the following to the Press
"On 24 May at approximately 23:50, H.E. Mr. Yukio TAKASU, Permanent Representative of Japan to the United Nations requested the President of the Security Council to convene an urgent meeting of the Security Council to consider the nuclear test by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, under the Council’s agenda item entitled 'Non-proliferation / Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.' The time of the urgent meeting is planned tomorrow afternoon, but as soon as it is set it will be communicated."
Just after 2 a.m., the White House issued a statement by President Obama, concluding that "We have been and will continue working with our allies and partners in the Six-Party Talks as well as other members of the U.N. Security Council in the days ahead."
Meanwhile UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, previously South Korea's foreign minister, was not in New York but rather Copenhagen, set to give a speech before a relatively obscure UN agency, the Office of Project Service, and then to fly to Finland.
Ban had arrived in Denmark Sunday morning on a UN plane from Sri Lanka, where he toured interment camps ringed with barbed wire and soldiers, planned and built by UNOPS, and was flown over the shattered "No Fire" zone in a military helicopter. (Click here for Inner City Press' eye-witness account.) Perhaps, said one wag, Ban would soon selectively tour the UN's dubious projects in North Korea, where UN Development Program funds were diverted to dual use technology with no oversight.
When North Korea in 2006 shot off a missile, the Security Council met until it passed a sanctions resolution. Earlier this year, the launching of a rocket that North Korea called a satellite yielded a far weaker statement. Nevertheless, North Korea reacted by scrapping the Six Party Talks and vowing further tests.
Before and after the rocket / missile test, the UN's Ban Ki-moon was strangely silent about North Korea, including its arrest of journalists as alleged spies. In the month of April, he told the Press, he was in New York only three times, for a total of five days. To be fair, perhaps no UN Secretary General, even one from the Peninsula, could have an effect on the situation in North Korea. But, some ask, should one at least pretend to try?
From Hanoi at an ASEM meeting discussing among other topics Myanmar, the Japanese foreign ministry spokesman vowed that his country would request Security Council meeting and actions. Ban, according to his senior official and now reportedly himself, will travel to Myanmar in early July, what ever the outcome of Aung San Suu Kyi's kangaroo trial now underway. No time for North Korea, but time for UNOPS and Finland? We will be covering the response to North Korea from the UN, Security Council and Secretary General, watch this site.
And see, www.innercitypress.com/unsc1may1dprk052509.html
