By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, April 1 -- When Grigol Vashadze, Georgia's foreign minister, scheduled a press conference at the UN on April 1, few knew what it would be about. Inner City Press went, to ask about a little reported controversy about how to fund the UN's participation in Geneva about Abkhazia. In fact, there were no other media questions asked.
Inner City Press asked about refugee evictions in Tbilisi -- Vashadze said these had been misrepresented -- and about Georgia's loss to Russia in the International Court of Justice the day before. Vashadze said that the ICJ had just not wanted to get involved. He also said that Russia had given weapons to Gaddafi in Libya, leading to the deaths of civilians.
Inner City Press ran back to the Security Council, where Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin was still meeting with the incoming President of the Council, Colombia's Nestor Osorio. When Churkin came out, Inner City Press asked him about funding the Geneva process, and filmed the Q&A for possible upload to YouTube. (This will happen later: Churkin made some on-camera jokes about Georgia).
Churkin said that Russia favors it being in the regular UN budget, not a trust fund as proposed by Georgia. (Inner City Press asked Ban Ki-moon's deputy spokesman Farhan Haq for the Secretariat's thinking, but as on March 4 from Ban's lead spokesman Martin Nesirky, got no substantive answer, only dodges.)
Inner City Press suggested to Churkin that he watch Vashadze's press conference on the UN webcast.
Churkin did in fact watch it -- he came back to the Security Council at 5 pm for the emergency consultations on the attack on the UN compound in Mazar i Sharif and called over all of the reporters waiting. He said that Russia is not blocking the continued funding of the Geneva process, and spoke about the ICJ win.
Asked about Vashadze's statements about Russia arming Gaddafi, he scoffed and walked into the Council.
Moments later, the Georgians sent Inner City Press a press release about the ICJ ruling. A UN official stopped and told Inner City Press, of the Geneva Abkhazia funding issue, “It's a big thing. It's a small thing but it's a big thing.” And so it goes at the UN.
