Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at UN
www.innercitypress.com/ukmmb1srilanka070809.html
UNITED NATIONS, July 8 -- The United Kingdom, whose power is so magnified by its permanent seat on the UN Security Council that like France it is one of the UN's major defenders, finds its interface with the Organization in some disarray.
Beyond the so-called "Facebook-gate" surrounding UK Permanent Representative Sir John Sawers, fairly or not, now the UK's Minister for the UN Lord Mark Malloch Brown has announced he will step down by the end of July "for family reasons."
This comes a fortnight after Malloch Brown told Inner City Press that "As far as I'm concerned, the IMF loan [to Sri Lanka] is not going anywhere." Given the personal qualifier, one wonders about the UK's engagement with the Rajapaksa administration going forward, particularly given lack of UK statements on the ongoing internment in northern Sri Lanka including by ostensible envoy Des Browne (who was seen July 7 during Prime Minister's Questions raising not Sri Lanka but a proposed business closing in his Kilmamock district).
This new transition recalls Malloch Brown's flirtation with the private sector, specifically the empire of his long-time friend George Soros, just after he left the UN with Kofi Annan at the end of 2006. While working for the UN in New York, the Malloch Browns lived on a Soros-owned estate in suburban Westchester.
When questioned about the potential conflict of interest, given for example the intertwining of the UN Development Program which MMB had headed with Soros' Open Society Institute, MMB said he was paying $10,000 a month. He declined to provide documentation.
Subsequently, after Inner City Press exposed MMB's decision while at UNDP to spend over $500,000 on a purportedly independent scholarly book praising UNDP and himself, Malloch Brown lost his cool and dropped the "J word" -- jerk -- for which then UN spokesman Stephane Dujuarric apologized days later.
The book, "UNDP: A Better Way?" by Craig N. Murphy, thanks as the first acknowledgement "Mark Malloch Brown, who hired me to write this history. He offered the unbeatable combination of... a good salary and travel budget." MMB like Murphy continues to search for that.
Before Malloch Brown's second hand apology, a new rationale was found: Malloch Brown was defending his friend Brian Gleeson, embroiled then in a separate UNDP scandal. Now Gleeson is being recycled as the Australian government's Coordinator General for "Remote Indigenous Services." Another of MMB's UNDP (and by his own account Soros) compadres, Kalman Mizsei, has resurfaced as EU envoy in Moldova.
And see, www.innercitypress.com/ukmmb1srilanka070809.html
