By Matthew Russell Lee
www.innercitypress.com/ganine2budget122409.html
UNITED NATIONS, December 24 -- A UN budget deal was sealed at 4 a.m. on Christmas Eve, just as the building itself began to be gutted. While two countries, Bahrain and Bahamas, managed to get their assessment decreased by a side letter from General Assembly President Ali Treki, Russia and its allies lost a vote about rates of exchange, and only begrudgingly supported the overall deal.
Israel called for a vote on support of the Goldstone report on Gaza, and found only a couple of African countries and North Korea to support it.
The campaign by Syria and others against Terje Roed Larsen's role in Lebanon never came to fruition. India on the other hand gave a long speech denouncing the upgrade of a human rights liaison post in New York to Assistant Secretary General, but did not call for a vote.
Throughout the night, when Ambassador and Treki met and milled around in the UN's basement, Inner City Press quizzed Permanent Representatives and staffers and got increasingly candid answers as the night went on. "This place is a joke," said one South Asian envoy. "We pay too much," said a Latin American. "Bahrain's play was shameful." The live blog is online here.
In between the Budget Committee vote at 2 a.m. and the large session upstairs to confirm it from 3 to 4, dozens of Ambassadors toasted with Scotch whiskey and the remains of take-out pizza, wishing each other happy holidays. The Delegates Lounge, a fixture, will close on Christmas Eve for up to two years. During the first part there will be no construction in the space: it will simply lie empty, which the General Assembly next door remains open. "They're just closing it to close it," several delegates complained.
Unlike in his first year when despite pleading from Secretary General Ban Ki-moon the U.S. broke consensus on the budget, Wednesday night Mr. Ban was nowhere to be seen.
Ban's Controller stood BlackBerrying in the basement. Later his Under Secretary General for Management sat on the Budget Committee podium without saying a word. She left before the GA vote.
Inner City Press asked about India's argument that using the budget process to upgrade particular posts will create a precedent for more sleaze. I don't opine on that, she said. A staffer from the PGA's office said that current holder of the post, American Jessica Neuwirth, will not benefit from the upgrade. "She was only brought in for eleven months," he said. So who will get the post, after all this hoopla?
The evening -- or early morning -- ended with Myanmar denouncing criticism of its human rights record, but vowing as part of its foreign policy to continue to cooperate with the Secretary General's "Good Offices." The occupant of that post, Ibrahim Gambari, has been re-assigned to Darfur, for reasons as much budgetary as political. At the UN it is hard to disconnect the two. Happy holidays.
