By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, October 1, 2010, updated -- The trip next week to Sudan by the UN Security Council and media including Inner City Press has been confirmed, with the belated granting of visas by the Sudanese consulate in New York on Friday afternoon.
To some, the trip is still in limbo. A senior official of Sudan's ruling National Congress Party Rabie Abdelati Obeid was quoted Friday afternoon that
“We got to know of this information from the media that the United Nations Security Council will come to Sudan. But, up to now, I don’t think our government has received any information to coordinate, or to do the arrangement required for the U.N Security Council... I doubt that this U.N. Security Council (team) will be coming without informing our government. According to protocol, the president should be aware and should know because he is responsible for each and everything in the country. That is why I think such (a) visit will not happen unless this is (first coordinated with the president’s office) or through the proper channels.”
As presented in New York, the Security Council will travel from Uganda to Juba in South Sudan, west to Darfur, then for meetings in Khartoum. Apparently not part of the meetings is President Omar al Bashir, who has been indicted for war crimes and genocide by the International Criminal Court.
The US and UK said they could or would not meet with Bashir, and they said they were negotiating a mutually acceptable arrangement.
“Don't ask, don't tell” is the compromise that has been worked out: the Council will not ask to meet with Bashir, and he won't ask to meet with them. But, Inner City Press points out, he could just show up. He is after all the president of the country.
France had also expressed opposition to meeting with Bashir, but French Permanent Representative Araud will not be making the trip. Nor will Nigeria's Joy Ogwu.
Russia's Vitaly Churkin a Council meeting on September 30 to ask which journalists had asked to go, and why the Office of the Spokesperson for the Secretary General needed to send anyone at all. Spokesperson Martin Nesirky has been seen rather desperately speaking Russian with Churkin. It does not appear that this has solved Nesirky's and his office's expulsion from Council consultations.
Leaving New York on the evening of Monday, October 4, the Council will first travel via a UN plane from Nairobi to Uganda and meet with President Yoweri Museveni. The troops he has dispatched to the African Union mission in Somalia will be discussed, their compensation and whether in light of the UN's Mapping Report alleging war crimes by the UPDF in the Democratic Republic of Congo they will be withdrawn.
Then on to Sudan, apparently. Outside the Security Council chamber on Friday afternoon, the Permanent Representative of a Permanent Five member of the Council said, of course we are going, they have given us the visas and we have the terms of reference. And at 4:30 p.m. on Friday, Inner City Press received its visa.
So what is the NCP's Rabie Abdelati Obeid talking about? Or does this reflect a split in the NCP, perhaps to reveal itself more while the Council is in Sudan?
As noted above, Inner City Press is going on the trip. The goal is to file five or more pieces a day, wireless permitting. Watch this site.
