UNITED NATIONS, August 31, 11:45 am -- What's in a lunch? For a week now, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has been holding lunch meetings with groups of four to five journalists at a time.
These come after attacks on Ban for a failure to fight corruption in the UN, following by the scandal of the UN's inaction as 154 women were raped 20 miles from one of its peacekeeping bases in the Congo.
At the August 27 UN noon briefing, two journalists not invited to the lunches inquired into Ban's criteria for issuing invitations, and afterward linked the lunches to an attempt by Ban to improve his image with an eye toward winning a second term. Ban's spokesman Martin Nesirky returned fire, figuratively, at the journalists.
Inner City Press has been invited to lunch with Ban later today. Neither in the invitation nor subsequent back and forth was the lunch described as off the record. (This report is being written and published an hour before the lunch, for the record.) Inner City Press asked who else would be present, but has not been told.
At least at the first of the lunches, Under Secretary General for Management Angela Kane was present, and the charges in former USG Inga Britt Ahlenius and her stinging End of Assignment Report were discussed.
Will Ms. Kane be present at the August 31 session? Inner City Press asked, but was not told. A session later last week included Ban's speechwriter Michael Meyer, as well as spokesman Nesirky.
We return and will return to the question, what are these lunches for?
A member of Team Ban has said he likes to meet the press. Ban is certainly cordial: earlier on Tuesday on his way into the General Assembly's meeting on human trafficking, he greeted Inner City Press, amid glad handing with many ambassadors. But he rarely speaks on the record, for example on the Congo rape scandal. Will he, at the lunch?
Some of Ban's better moment have been off the record. He gave a speech full of jokes, in the photo op room next to his office. Inner City Press was told not to film it, not to report it. He told a story about landing in Afghanistan - off the record. His handlers don't seem to know what they are doing. We'll see. Watch this site.
