Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at UN
www.innercitypress.com/untrip1may6srilanka052209.html
UN PLANE, BAHRAIN, May 22 -- Parked on a runway in Bahrain refueling on his way to Sri Lanka, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon told the Press he had been to Sri Lanka only once before, in the early 1980s as part of South Korea's diplomatic unit on the UN. He said that North Korea was making inroads with the Non-Aligned Movement, which he tried to counter on behalf of Seoul. Inner City Press asked, weren't you also in Sri Lanka after the tsunami?
You're right, Mr. Ban said sheepishly. I had forgotten. He recounted how he and now-President Mahinda Rajapaksa flew in a helicopter over the then-destroyed port of Hambantota, where now the Chinese are constructive a massive port as part of their String of Pearls strategy. He described another dinner, this time in Seoul, with Mahinda Rajapaksa. Ban said he gets along well with President Rajapaksa. More on this shortly.
Ban said that in April he was only in New York three times, for a total of five days. Inner City Press asked where he does his laundry, and if he'd seen the previous day's Wall Street Journal expose of the UN's questionable handling of sexual harassment cases. Ban nodded and acknowledged that the topic had come up in his visit to Washington just prior to the Sri Lanka trip. We have a zero tolerance policy, he said.
Inner City Press asked what he would do about making public what Troop Contributing Countries do when their soldiers are repatriated from UN Peacekeeping missions charged with sexual abuse or exploitation. Ban said that whole groups of soldiers are sent home. Like to Sri Lanka, Inner City Press said, referring to the charges against more than 100 Sri Lankan soldiers while in Haiti with the UN.
Ban indicated that this particular repatriation shouldn't be asked about at this time. He mentioned the Moroccans, who were repatriated from the UN Mission in Cote d'Ivoire.
Ban looked around the plane and said this is the second largest group of journalists to accompany him. There would have been more, Inner City Press told him, if he had come before the No Fire Zone was over-run. Concluding the conversation on a high note, Ban said he had read in the Press the story of the Security Council ambassadors who had to travel by bus from Congo to Rwanda after a UN staffer shot his pistol in this same white UN plane while trying to show that his weapon was empty. I read about that, Ban said. And then he returned to the front of the patched-up plane.And see, www.innercitypress.com/untrip1may6srilanka052209.html
