UNITED NATIONS, September 28, 2010 -- If 15 UN Security Council diplomats travel to a country run by an indicted war criminal but no one can take pictures of it, did the trip really take place?
That was a question being asked Tuesday at the UN, as details leaked out to Inner City Press about the Council's on again, off again and now on again trip to Sudan.
The sticking point had been whether Sudan would demand that the Council Ambassadors meet with President Omar al Bashir, indicted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes and genocide, and secondarily whether the Council would first visit Khartoum or Juba in South Sudan.
Western diplomats bragged to Inner City Press on Tuesday morning that they had prevailed on both points. The trip would go to Juba, and in all probability to Darfur -- Darfur wasn't mentioned in the Council Tuesday, one participate said -- before going to Khartoum.
“The Council won't ask to meet with Bashir, and he won't ask to meet with us,” one seemingly excited diplomat told Inner City Press about the trip on Tuesday, adding that Bashir might conveniently be out of the country, in Libya, he said.
The “don't ask, don't tell” trip, Inner City Press has dubbed it.
Bashir has also been invited to visit Cote d'Ivoire. Inner City Press asked the UN's envoy to that country K.Y. Choi about this on Tuesday. Choi's response, strangely, was to repeat that inviter Laurent Gbagbo and his two main opponents are all committed to a peaceful first round of elections on October 31.
This perhaps is the approach of the UN Secretariat to questions about war crimes and impunity: to repeat talking points again and again, even if unrelated. We'll see.
Footnote: Just how dysfunctional things have become between the Security Council and the Office of the Spokesman of the Secretary General, which has already been barred from the Council consultation meetings they for years attended and summarized, is exemplified by that the fact that less than a week before the re-scheduled trip, the Council has not told the OSSG about any arrangements for press.
On past trips -- Inner City Press accompanied the Security Council to Sudan, the Congo, Rwanda, Cote d'Ivoire and elsewhere in 2008 -- the Council has let the OSSG invite the press, arrange for visas, and attend. Apparently not this time. Watch this site.
