At UN, As Ban's Sustainability Panel May Include Rudd, Can His Rule Be Sustained?
UNITED NATIONS, August 9 -- After weeks without taking questions from the independent press at the UN, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon will hold a press conference Monday at 11. While questions of mis-management, silence on Darfur and powerless panels on Sri Lanka and the Gaza flotilla swirl, a more upbeat pretext for the presser has been found.
Ban will announce, or launch in UN parlance, a “High Level Panel on Global Sustainability.” In announcing Ban's long delayed press conference, the UN said it “will also address other topics, including the Secretary General's recent trip to Japan.”
Just before he left on that trip, Ban took a single on camera question, about his Gaza flotilla panel. For this question, he chose the UN's own media, UN Radio. The self-interview was then called a “media stakeout” by UN Television.
While presumably in an attempt to build suspense the UN's announcement said that the “full list of Panel Members and their Terms of Reference will be available at the press conference,” one possible member of the Panel has been asked about by Inner City Press, repeatedly, resulting in a series of “no comments” from the UN.
After his loss of power in Australia, Kevin Rudd flew to New York and met with Ban Ki-moon. Inner City Press attended the photo op, and noted that Ban's climate advisor Janos Pasztor was in attendance, and that the meeting lasted a full 50 minutes.
(While Inner City Press published its photos, it appears that none of UN Photo's shots are on the UN website, when searched by "Rudd.")
Inner City Press asked Ban's spokesperson if the meeting involved the offering of a UN position of any kind. It was just a courtesy call, Inner City Press was repeatedly told -- even after Rudd, back in Australia, bragged through his spokesman about the offer of a post.
UN climate staffers and Ban Ki-moon defenders approached Inner City Press to say that what was being offered was not a full UN position, rather membership on a new body -- the “High Level Panel on Global Sustainability.”
This would explain the claim that the UN position Rudd was referring to would not require relocating to New York, and would allow him to remain involved in politics in Australia. His goal seemed to be to show his successor his high international profile, to gain the foreign minister spot. While this now seems unlikely, and Rudd's project of seeking a Security Council seat may also be abandoned, this morning's announcement may well involve Kevin Rudd.
If it does, it will represent Ban causing a “major embarrassment” for the current leader of Australia, Julia Gillard. Why would Ban do this? Sources say that the Obama administration, which could veto a second term for Ban, has urged Ban to find a position for Rudd.
Some wondered why Ban would name Alvaro Uribe to his Gaza flotilla panel just after Venezuela delivered to Ban a letter accusing Uribe of trying to raise tensions in the region. Now, Venezuela speaks of using its upcoming post as head of the Group of 77 and China to try to stop a second term by Ban. Watch this site.
Footnote: Ban is made a pattern of collecting outgoing heads of state. He named Uribe to his Gaza flotilla panel even before Uribe left power in Colombia, on August 7. Uribe will be deputy to former New Zealand prime minister Geoffrey Palmer, a protoge of Helen Clark, whom Ban named as the head of the UN Development Program (from which she has increasingly commandeered other top UN posts, often to Ban's detriment as in the case of naming Paul Kagame as Zapatero's co-chair for MDGs advocacy, and a Costa Rican over African candidates for the Number Two spot at UNDP.
Some see the contradiction: Ban refused to allow ostensibly independent OIOS chief Inga Britt Ahlenius to choose her deputy, but allowed Helen Clark to ignore a commitment made to the African Group to get the deputy post at UNDP, when Clark was named to the top job, representing the developed world. And so it goes in Ban's UN.
