By Matthew Russell Lee
www.innercitypress.com/darfur3nigeria120109.html
UNITED NATIONS, December 1 -- In the lobby of UN headquarters on Tuesday morning, the UN's envoy - designate to Darfur Ibrahim Gambari told Inner City Press, "I was in Washington yesterday." Over the weekend, Gambari began asking certain UN staff to work for him in Darfur.
Several Darfur focused advocacy groups have contacted Inner City Press responding to its exclusive reporting and expressing concern about Mr. Gambari, pointing to his recent "good offices" role with military government of Myanmar, and previous service of the Sani Abacha military government in his native Nigeria.
Does Gambari's November 30 Washington trip, they now ask, confirm that these concerns are not shared by the Obama administration?
A senior UN official approached Inner City Press on Tuesday and criticized Gambari's "unprincipled" actions regarding Myanmar. "He goes to China and Russia and says, 'you have to help me with these self righteous Westerners,'" the official said. "Then he goes to the U.S. and says, 'China and Russia don't to do anything.' Finally he tells Than Shwe, 'I can help you improve your image, I did it in Nigeria.'"
This recounting is not inconsistent with how Gambari himself has described his role.
In something of a new low for the UN, Acting Spokesperson for the Secretary General Marie Okabe at Tuesday's noon briefing dodged Inner City Press' request that she confirm that the Secretariat has already offered the post to Gambari.
Ms. Okabe said that a joint letter with the African Union will go to the Security Council. She insisted that this procedural explanation answered Inner City Press' question. But the request for for confirmation that the Secretariat has offered the post to Gambari. On Monday, three senior UN officials told Inner City Press this, with one of them adding only that "it's not signed."
The Secretary General himself, when Inner City Press told him the Gambari to Darfur story had already been published, asked "how did you know?" For his acting spokesperson, the next day, to decline to confirm the offer falls short of the transparency -- even, of the competence -- that has been promised.
Similarly, Ms. Okabe on Tuesday quoted from a Ban Ki-moon speech that he will shortly appoint a woman as Associate Administrator of the UN Development Program. Video here, from Minute 5:35.
Since the African Group, as exclusively reported by Inner City Press, has protested to Ban against his projected appointment of Rebecca Grynspan of Costa Rica to the post, announcing now the gender of the winner appears to reject the African protest.
Inner City Press asked for confirmation that the appointee is Rebecca Grynspan, and Ms. Okabe said no name is being announced. But doesn't announcing the gender imply that the decision is made? "I only know what he said in his statement," Ms. Okabe said. Isn't a spokesperson supposed to know, or at least be able to find out, more than that?
Some think that the top nomination have cynically, or demographically, become linked. The Ban Administration will be "humiliating" the African Group, as one Ambassador put it, by denying them the UNDP post they believe was promised to them when Helen Clark of New Zealand took the top spot and Ad Melkert left.
But the Ban Administration will point, as a sop to Africa, to the appointment of Gambari to the Darfur job, a post that was certainly going to go to an African anyway. "Or they'll wait on Grynspan, to combine it with some other announcement," a UN official told Inner City Press. Watch this site.
