By Matthew Russell Lee
www.innercitypress.com/un1monte010110.html
UNITED NATIONS, January 1 -- With the short list for the UN's top post in Afghanistan reportedly narrowed down to three, UN sources confirm to Inner City Press that the push is on to get approval for Staffan de Mistura, currently in a virtually no-show job with the World Food Program.
What many in the UN but few outside it talk about is di Mistura's previous choice of UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's son in law Siddarth Chatterjee as his deputy in Iraq, and the role they think this plays in de Mistura's frontrunner status.
While Mr. Ban has shown discomfort and anger about any questions concerning the fast promotions his son in law has received since he became Secretary General, few explanations have been given.
That UN officials like de Mistura and now Jan Mattsson of the UN Office of Project Services, where Chatterjee has been given a D-1 position that is quietly being upgraded to D-2, ingratiate themselves with UN Headquarters by promoting the Secretary General's son in law has also not been addressed.
Inner City Press, which covered both of these Chatterjee promotions, the latter exclusively, was chided by Mr. Ban's previous Spokesperson Michele Montas to stop asking about Chatterjee in the UN's noon briefings, but rather to get answers from Ban's senior advisor Kim Won-soo.
This meeting was quickly changed to be "off the record," and then canceled. South Korea's Deputy Permanent Representative then took Inner City Press to lunch and provided a detailed defense of the promotions and of Mr. Ban. (Later, he claimed the lunch was only about September's UN General Debate.)
Chatterjee himself took to calling and making legal threats to journalists who had picked up on Inner City Press' reports on his promotions, and getting them removed from the Internet, at least from web sites hosted in his native India.
It is not clear if Chatterjee made these calls during time he was being paid by UNOPS. It is clear, however, that UNOPS devoted staff time to media strategies to defend Chatterjee's promotions and Chatterjee himself, work it hard to imagine being done if he was not the UN Secretary General's son in law.
In the week between Christmas and New Year, Inner City Press submitted to Mr. Ban's new Spokesman Martin Nesirky questions about Siddarth Chatterjee, including about his promotions, qualifications and fitness.
While on the afternoon of Christmas Eve Mr. Nesirky's office provided at least cursory answers to other questions asked, including referring questions about possible nepotism by a Ban appointee to another spokesperson, the questions about Ban's son in law not only were not answered, they were not mentioned. But they will not go away. The responses are being sought only in fairness, explicitly on deadline. Watch this site.
UN's Ban and de Mistura, son in law answers and Karzai veto not shown
The other two named candidates are Jean Marie Guehenno, strangely with the backing of the New York Times, and Ian Martin, currently in an ill-defined role with the UN Department of Political Affairs. What the Times did not mention about Mr. Guehenno, in fairness, is that after he was replaced by fellow Frenchman Alain Le Roy, he was given a no show UN Under Secretary General position for "Regional Cooperation."
While that post should have involved liaising between the UN and NATO, for example, or ECOWAS or even the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, months into the job Guehenno candidly admitted to Inner City Press that he had done no work at all. He was shut in writing a book. How its publication, or the timing of its publication, may be related to the current campaigning for the Kabul post is not clear.
Following his candor, Guehenno clammed up. At a recent forum about illegal mining in the Congo, at which questions about the UN Peacekeeping Mission in the Congo's involvement with rogue Army units who mine and massacres, Guehenno explicitly refused to answer any questions from Inner City Press. While in the midst of his campaign for Kabul he perhaps felt he had nothing to gain, ham handed rebuffing of the press would not make Guehenno that different front Kai Eide, outgoing in only one of the word's two senses.
Ironically, Guehenno is also mentioned by human rights groups as a candidate to take over from Alan Doss at the UN Mission in the Congo. Doss is himself embroiled in a nepotism scandal since Inner City Press received and published his e-mail telling the UN Development Program to bend and break UN rules and give a job to his daugther.
Mr. Ban five months ago promised an investigation, but some attribute the delay to Ban's own resistance to nepotism questions. Doss may be allowed to serve out his contract then Guehenno, if still available, be given the Congo job.
Ian Martin appeared to go a good job in Nepal, although it appears now to be unraveling. When Inner City Press asked him in a UN hallway about Kabul, Martin laughed. Later he clarified he was not laughing with Inner City Press, only laughing. And laughter may be one of the many things there is not enough of in Kabul.
Footnote: Inner City Press is also told that the U.S., not wanting to be upstaged in Afghanistan, has joined Ban in pushing President Hamid Karzai to accept de Mistura. But Karzai, who previously vetoed the proposal to make Paddy Ashdown a "Super Envoy" to Afghanistan, is near to issuing a similar veto of di Mistura. Watch this site.
