By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, December 28 -- Three of the five Ambassadors leaving the Security Council, and one of the five coming on, did press conferences at the UN this month. Some wonder if this portends even less transparency by the Security Council and its elected non-Permanent members.
The Ambassadors of Austria, Mexico and Uganda briefed the dwindling ranks of UN correspondents in December. Thomas Mayr-Harting of Austria focused on his chairmanship of the Al Qaeda and Taliban Sanctions committee, making much of small increases in due process.
Inner City Press asked him about another committee he chaired, on Sudan sanctions, and the report on Chinese bullets in Darfur. Mayr-Harting forthrightly replied that he forwarded the report to December's Council president, the United States, and it was up to the US to release the report.
An inquiry with a US Ambassador led to a promise of a response from the US Mission's spokesman, which has yet to come.
Claude Heller of Mexico briefed on the morning of December 23. His sanctions work involved Somalia; he is known to have waited for days in the Frankfurt airport after the Icelandic volcano's explosion, waiting to fly to Eritrea. He never spoke publicly at the time of the outcome, saying he had to first brief the Council.
For news purposes, this timing doesn't work.
Inner City Press asked Heller if he thought the Security Council's few informal meetings about the bloody fighting in Sri Lanka in 2009 had any effect. Like Mayr-Harting, Heller claimed that the basement sessions may have saved some lives. Could more than 40,000 people have been killed?
Mexico's role has been clearer in the recent press statement on Cote d'Ivoire, referencing an earlier Mexican drafted statement about the safety of UN personnel.
Ruhakana Rugunda of Uganda, later on December 23, took questions from two correspondents on wider African issues, saying the UN should do more against the Lord's Resistance Army and should finally hold the promised referendum in Western Sahara.
Rugunda said the Cote d'Ivoire's Laurent Gbabgo should be given a “comfortable” way to leave that country.
Inner City Press asked if comfortable meant immunity, even impunity. Rugunda shook his head, and asked to substitute the word “safe” for comfortable. The unstated backdrop was Nigeria's decision to hand over Charles Taylor to the Sierra Leone Tribunal in the Hague.
Days after a grenade attack on a Kampala bound bus in Kenya, Inner City Press asked if Rugunda would be seeking some Council action. He said an investigation of the blast continued, but it was hard for him to believe that hand grenades are normal baggage for such a trip.
As a final question, Inner City Press asked about President Museveni's brother's involvement in Saracen, a company working murkily as a private military contractor in Mogadishu and in Puntland. Rugunda, in defense of his President, said that the brother is a retired general and of course such people must find something to do.
Rugunda said Saracen's programs have “nothing to do with AMISOM,” the UN supported African Union force in which Ugandan soldiers are the majority.
In something of an encore swansong, Austria's Mayr-Harting appeared at an ill attended stakeout on a relatively obscure but not unimportant point: the International Criminal Tribunals' residual mechanisms, which some call “Fall Back for Mladic.” At least Mayr-Harting spoke.
But what of Turkey's Apakan and the relatively new Japanese Ambassador Tsuneo Nishida? Apakan is a pleasant man who patiently speaks to journalists outside the meetings of the North Korea sanctions committee he's chaired. But he predicts what the press will asks and dodges the questions in advance. While he scarcely explained his country's vote on Iran sanction, on Cyprus he was more forthcoming.
Japan was rarely heard from, at least in English, after Ambassador Yukio Takasu left, now to return for an ill defined UN position on Human Security. Nishida, we hardly knew ye. Even with Japan leaving the Council, a return to the briefings at the Mission for non-Japanese reporters, previously held by then Deputy Permanent Representative Takahiro Shinyo, is recommended.
Of the incoming members, India's Ambassador did a sit down on the record lunch for much of the UN press corps. Afterward he complained of being misquoted, got one correction, and asked Inner City Press whether it is worth it to do it again in the future.
The answer is, yes.
Half of the Permanent Five members' Ambassadors do regular briefings for at least some of the press corps. The half is the US; the French, as Inner City Press not without controversy reported, explicitly excluded all reporters from Lebanon, at least for a time. China and Russia should speak more is the consensus position, at least to understand them.
Germany's Ambassador gave an interview about his country's Council plans, but only in Germany. South Africa has an able team at the UN but has yet to speak. (Their last public statement was to explain in the General Assembly voting for protection of homosexuals language that they had voted against in the Third Committee.)
Portugal, which conducted a notable but at least for this year unsuccessful fight to try to chair the Council's Working Methods committee, has yet to speak publicly to correspondents, although the door of Jose Filipe de Moraes Cabral seems open. Of Colombia little is known, although President Santos did attend the recent ICC State Parties conference in New York.
One of the remaining five, Bosnia, will preside over the Security Council in January, with what at least at first looks like a light agenda, other than Sudan. We'll be there -- watch this site.
