By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, January 7 -- On Sudan, the UN appears engaged in one-way communication, not in answering questions. Two days after a senior UN official, insisting that he not be named, told the Press that the government of Sudan had blocked food resupply to Tanzanian peacekeepers in Khor Abeche in Darfur, UN spokesman Martin Nesirky simply refused to provide any information about the incident. Audio here, from Minute 10.
Inner City Press, for the second day in a row, asked why the UN's envoy in Darfur Ibrahim Gambari had not publicly complained of the blocking of resupply to his peacekeepers. Nesirky said that blockage of resupply of UN peacekeepers by host governments take place “not only in Darfur.”
It is not clear to which UN missions Nesirky was referring: Liberia? Haiti? The UN in Cote d'Ivoire last month loudly protested the mere threat of a blockade, and Ban Ki-moon said other member states should break any blockade. But this was and is not said in Darfur.
Turning to South Sudan, Inner City Press asked Nesirky to specify when top UN peaceekeeper Alain Le Roy asked Sudan to agree to an increase in peacekeepers. On January 6, Sudan's Ambassador to the UN said he had been in a meeting with Le Roy for two hours the previous day, and Le Roy never made the request.
“You don't expect me to contradict the Under Secretary General for Peacekeeping Operations,” Nesirky said.
It was another opportunity to rebut a public allegation of misspeaking by a high UN official, which the UN Spokesperson's Office declined. “Ask DPKO,” Nesirky said, as he's referred Inner City Press to the UN Mission in Kosovo about a UN judge freeing a person accused of organ trafficking.
Several Security Council diplomats have told Inner City Press there is the Council less and less satisfaction with the performance of Ibrahim Gambari, who at the same time is drawing more and more praise from Sudan's government. But will there be accountability? Watch this site.
