By Matthew Russell Lee, Exclusive
www.innercitypress.com/undp2deputy111909.html
UNITED NATIONS, November 19 -- The continental battle for the number two post at the UN Development Program, on which Inner City Press reported exclusively yesterday, heated up Wednesday night when the Ambassador of Cameroon approached UNDP Administrator Helen Clark as she left early from a reception about, ironically enough, Africa.
Ambassador Michel Tommo Monthe, whose country has put forward an economist for the Associate Administrator post, later told Inner City Press that until now it has been impossible for him to meet with Ms. Clark.
The African Group, he said, last week wrote a letter to Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, copied to Ms. Clark, demanding that the impending nomination of Rebecca Grynspan of Costa Rica not be announced.
"They are invoking gender, " Ambassador Monthe told Inner City Press. "The initial deal, when the former Associate [Ad Melkert of the Netherlands] went... the deal was an African should take the position. Now that there are strong Africans ready, they waver. The main activity of UNDP is on Africa, how do you not having someone at the senior level?"
Monthe said that Cameroon has a strong candidate, a "doctor economique" formerly the Permanent Observer of the African Union in Geneva, and director of the economics department at the African Union.
"They wanted to announce this last Friday," Ambassador Monthe recounted Inner City Press. ""We wrote a letter to Ban Ki-moon, with a copy to Helen Clark. We said, we are not going to accept it. The post can't go to the Costa Rican."
Ambassador Monthe continued, "I have been trying to meet Ms. Clark for the last three months. She didn't receive me. I said, this has to wait. I want to see you to discuss that matter."
The Ambassador of Zambia, this month's chairman of the African Group, put it this way to Inner City Press: "the duties of this person will have a lot to do with Africa,and therefore it would be advantageous to have someone from that perspective. Helen is around. [This is] absolutely a good question."
But in her months at UNDP, Helen Clark has yet to hold a press conference in UN headquarters or take questions from the Press.
Ms. Clark, who had been driven in a limousine that three blocks from UNDP's headquarters to the Olympus-sponsored African environmental photography reception held at the Japan Society, had to pass by Monthe and another sub Saharan African Ambassador on her way out of the event. Now, what will she do?
What will Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, already questioned by the African Group for merging the UN Office of the Special Adviser on Africa into another office, do? Watch this site.
