By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, October 25 -- So did Sudan arrest internally displaced people who spoke with the UN Security Council in Abu Shouk IDP camp earlier this month?
The US belatedly went public about the issue, first in background comments late last week. Then on Monday after a Security Council meeting at which Sudan denied the arrests, including after the meeting in a stakeout Q&A with Inner City Press, the US issued a written statement by Ambassador Susan Rice, who was not present at the Council meeting.
Rice's statement concluded that “the U.S. and the UK asked the UN to address this issue in today's UN Security Council briefing so that the full Council could hear directly from UN officials about this matter. We have yet to receive any information that alleviates our deep concern over this issue.”
Sources inside the Security Council's closed door consultations told Inner City Press that the UK and one non-Permanent member asked UN peacekeeping chief Alain Le Roy to say what the UN knows about arrests, and to “not politicize” the issue. Le Roy's subsequent answer was described as “strange” and “not convincing.”
Inner City Press asked Le Roy, as he left the meeting, if the US or UK had provided him with names, on a confidential basis. No, he said, adding that the names were not known.
On camera at the UN stakeout, Inner City Press asked Sudan's Ambassador to the UN Dafaala El Haj Ali Osman about the arrests. He acknowledged arrests, but not of anyone who had met with the Security Council. Video here.
A Sudanese diplomat scoffed to Inner City Press that “Susan Rice got a letter from the Enough Project and Genocide Intervention, that's all this is.”
But did these two groups and the four other ones signing the letter think that Susan Rice would be at the Security Council meeting where it was discussed, to push on the issue and speak afterward to counter the defiant denial of her Sudanese counterpart Dafaala El Haj Ali? Watch this site.
