By Matthew Russell Lee, Exclusive
UNITED NATIONS, December 17 -- The UN Security Council's handing out of chairmanships of its subsidiary bodies is stalled, Inner City Press has learned, by the Permanent Five members' attempts to give the Informal Working Group on Documentation and Procedure to Bosnia, rather than Portugal which wants it.
Portugal ran for the Security Council, beating out Canada, on a platform that included increasing the pace of Security Council reform and transparency. But their request to chair the Working Group on this subject is being opposed. The Permanent Five members -- the US and Russia more vehemently, Inner City Press is informed -- are proposing Bosnia, and a slower pace of reform.
The standoff has delayed the announcement of other Committee and Working Group chairs, including Germany over terrorism alongside South Africa for Resolution 1540 (which outgoing Mexico is giving up), and on Africa.
In terms of Documentation and Procedure, outgoing Council member Thomas Mayr-Harting of Austria on Friday morning praised the reform of the “informal interactive dialogues” of the kind held on Sri Lanka, Chad and the Cheonan incident between the Koreas.
He noted that under current rules, while Switzerland for example chairs the Peacebuilding group on Burundi, they cannot come in to closed door consultations. Therefore all talk in out in the open, unlike for example on Guinea Bissau, on which current Council member Brazil takes the lead.
Not all Council members chair a committee or working group. Gabon, for example, does not have one. “I have a small staff,” the country's Permanent Representative told Inner City Press. He has confirmed dressing down ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo for his talk of genocide in his last appearance. And so it goes at the UN.
