By Matthew Russell Lee
www.innercitypress.com/ukun1srilra080409.html
UNITED NATIONS, August 4 -- The UN Security "Council has to take decisions on each country on its merits," outgoing UK Ambassador to the UN John Sawers told the Press on Tuesday. Inner City Press had asked Sawers to explain why, despite saying that he had the votes to put Sri Lanka on the Council's agenda, the choice was made to keep the issues of civilian casualties and now detentions on the margin of the Council, in the UN basement, for the sake of Council unity.
"There is always a judgment to be made," Sawers answered, "was to whether Council unity at a moderate level of agreement is better than division on a more ambition level of agreement." Video here, from Minute 32:08.
The UK Mission under Sawers put sanctions on Zimbabwe to a vote in the Council, foreseeing and obtaining a double veto from China and Russia. On Sri Lanka, it never pushed for vote, even though on procedural matters such as additions to the Council's agenda no country has a veto.
This decision during the tenure of Sawers and France's Jean-Maurice Ripert, who is also leaving this month, will continue to be reviewed as internment continues in Sri Lanka, the press is barred from covering the supposed elections in the North, and investigations into the killing of aid workers are called off, the govern exonerating itself.
Inner City Press also asked Sawers what the Council's plan is, if any, to deal with the Lord's Resistance Army, which in recent days made deadly incursions from the Democratic Republic of the Congo into the Central African Republic and Southern Sudan. Video here, from Minute 31:44.
On the latter, Sawers appeared to conflate the documented LRA attacks with the separate tribal conflicts on which, he said, UN Peacekeeping chief Alain Le Roy would brief the Council later Tuesday. Sawers acknowledged of the LRA that the "Council needs to address" to issue, after the "exhaustive efforts of former president Chissano." But what is the plan?
Sawers fielded questions ranging from Iran -- a topic on which he's said less and less to the media after being named the head of the UK's intelligence agency MI6 - to Afghanistan. On the latter, no one asked Sawers to square the statements of his minister David Miliband and the UN's Kai Eide, who critiqued Miliband's call for talks with Taliban "local commanders." Eide said they are not important enough. But who does Eide work for?
Sawers deftly deflected a question about reports that Myanmar may have a nuclear program supported by North Korea, saying he would take the correspondent's scheduling suggestion under advisement. Sawers got his hackles up with a South Asian correspondent wondered why the UK doesn't give helicopters to the UN and African Union Mission in Darfur, UNAMID.
Do you think Sudan would accept them from us, Sawers pointedly asked. The correspondent persisted until Sawers said, we've had enough on that. He noted that the Rwandan contingent in Darfur still has its APCs trapped in Port Sudan. The "heavy lift" air support the U.S. bragged of was not mentioned.
Footnote: The partying for the departure of Jean-Maurice Ripert has already begun. On August 3, La Francophonie threw him a bash. Now Ripert is organizing his own farewell, seeking to invite the UN Security officers who went on the Council's African forays. Will the officer who shot through the UN plane in Goma last year, leading to a bus ride to Kigali, be invited?
