At UN on Southern Kordofan, Who Should Call for Probe Was Issue, No One Urging Action

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, July 18 -- On Southern Kordofan it emerges that the fight in the Security Council on July 15 was about whether the Council should be calling for an investigation of war crimes.

“Navi Pillay is already doing it,” a Council member told Inner City Press. “Why do we have to call for it?”

A UN official confided that a real investigation will show misdeed by the UN peacekeepers from Egypt as well. The conflict of interest is that the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights was only in Sudan as a component of the peacekeeping mission UNMIS. How can the UN report on itself?

The balance for the UN involves at least four legs: political, peacekeeping, humanitarian and human rights. And they may well be the pecking order, with human rights right at the bottom, at least under Haile Menkerios -- who flew indicted war criminal Ahmed Haroun on a UN copter -- and Ibrahim Gambari in Darfur.

What should future UN envoys do? How should they be judged? Watch this site.

Footnote: Meanwhile the Justice & Equality Movement is bragging that it teamed up with SPLM-North and fought and killed 100 Northern soldiers. It is a war, and the UN sits impotent. We will continue on this.