UNITED NATIONS, August 20 -- How does the UN choose which questions to answer, and to which publications? How should journalists know when to ask question about topics on which the UN rarely comments, like Guantanamo Bay, Chechnya, Tibet, Kashmir and many other Asian conflicts?
A week after Inner City Press asked the Spokesperson for Ban Ki-moon if he had received a letter from Cambodia asking Ban to mediate the country's border dispute with Thailand, Deputy Spokesman Farhan Haq sent a response to another publication, then called its reporting inaccurate.
On August 12, Inner City Press asked
Inner City Press: Cambodia now says that they’ve sent a letter to the Secretary-General and the Security Council. I don’t know if it’s been received. And a Cambodian, the Prime Minister, has said that he’ll be asking the Secretary-General personally to somehow coordinate this border dispute that they’ve had for some time but that seems to be heating up, with Thailand saying that they’re going to fortify their border. Is it something that DPA [Department of Political Affairs] is watching? Have you gotten the letter and would the Secretary-General be willing to mediate?
Spokesperson Martin Nesirky: We’ve seen the reports. We have not received any request. And if requests are received, not just in this case, but in any case, from parties to a dispute or conflict, asking for mediation, then, obviously, the United Nations, the Secretary-General would look at that. But we have not received a request from one or either or both.
This was the last Inner City Press heard from the UN. Then on August 20 a publication in the region reported that “The deputy spokesperson for UN Secretary General, Farhan Haq, replied to an email from the Cambodian press on August 18 saying that, 'The Secretary-General is willing to mediate situation when both sides request him to do so.'”
Inner City Press asked Haq about the statement, including why it was not sent out more broadly, including to Inner City Press which had asked the question. Video here, from Minute 15:10.
Haq first said that the report that Ban was “willing to mediate” was inaccurate. Haq said that all he sent out was that Ban “stands ready to help.” But where then did the press in the region get the quote?
How are journalists at the UN to guarantee that they receive the UN's responses to questions they have previously asked, or have NOT asked because of the UN's historic unwillingness to comment on the problems of the Permanent Five Security Council members, any one of which could veto a second term by Ban Ki-moon, such as Chechnya, Guantanamo Bay, Tibet or, as Inner City Press asked earlier in the briefing, France's expulsion of the Roma to Romania. Video here, from Minute 13:51.
Haq said the UN is monitoring it and if it has anything to say, we'll know.
In front of the General Assembly on August 20, Inner City Press asked the French charge d'affaires and a French spokesman about l'affaire Roma, and was met with blank stares. Let us know if there is a meeting on that, was the answer. But there are rarely meetings at the UN on controversial acts by Permanent Five members of the Security Council. They can block them in the Council, and the S-G- and his spokespeople don't seem to like to ruggle P-5 feathers, with a second term on the line....
If you ask, we try, Haq said more generally.
But what if you don't ask because the UN never comments? How can a reporter go on record as wanting statements about peace and security, without going down the line of all possible questions?
Someday it does fill like you go down the line, Haq said. And still we try.
But why send out responses selectively, like Haq sent his Kashmir response to other three journalists, and gave the UN's answer on the death of DSS staffer Louis Maxwell to a publication in Germany and not to Inner City Press, which had been asking about the case in the noon briefing in New York every day for a week? This, Haq did not answer. Watch this site.