By Matthew Russell Lee, Exclusive
UNITED NATIONS, December 20 -- Laurent Gbagbo has imported mercenaries into Cote d'Ivoire, chief UN peacekeeper Alain Le Roy told Inner City Press on Monday. After Le Roy briefed the UN Security Council, Inner City Press asked him to confirm or deny Gbagbo's use of mercenaries.
“We have confirmed it,” Le Roy answered. Inner City Press asked from where, and after a pause Le Roy said from Liberia, “they did not speak French.”
Le Roy told the Press the UN peacekeepers will not be leaving Cote d'Ivoire, as the AU andeeper ECOWAS have recognized Ouattara as the president.
Two UN peacekeepers have been injured, Le Roy said. Asked by Inner City Press if there are clashed beyond Abidjan, he said yes, naming a town forty kilometers from the capital. And then he was gone.
An African Permanent Representative on the Council said that in the closed door consultation, Le Roy did not use the word “mercenaries,” but rather “non Ivorians.” How diplomatic.
Susan Rice spoke to the media after the Council meeting, to read out a Cote d'Ivoire press statement drafted by Mexico (as was Resolution 1502, which it cites.)
Inner City Press asked her about Gbagbo's use of mercenaries. She said she wasn't aware of that being confirmed, but that if it was, it would be of concern not only to the US but to the Council.
She also told Inner City Press, after its question, that ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo's March 20, 2009 meeting with her and Deputy Alejandro Wolff about $9 billion Sudan's Omar al Bashir allegedly siphoned into bank accounts at Lloyds in the UK described in a cable made available by Wikileaks, was not in her “recollection.” Watch this site.
