By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, September 9 -- Amid a surge in aerial bombing in Sudan, the UN Security Council met behind closed doors Thursday about Abyei and Blue Nile State, Southern Kordofan and South Sudan. The meeting had no outcome.
The acting chief of the Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) Edmund Mulet told the Press he had an appointment. As Inner City Press asked of a Status of Forces Agreement has been reached for the UNISFA mission in Abyei where peacekeepers died while unable to be evacuated by helicopter from Wau in South Sudan, Mulet said not yet, and left.
On Friday Inner City Press asked the UN's Deputy Spokesman Eduardo del Buey when the UN plans to put in place a Status of Forces Agreement, and how it deploys peacekeepers without a plan to medevac them.
Del Buey said to "ask DPKO" -- but how? Nor has there been any answer on when the new French head of DPKO Herve Ladsous, named on September 2, will begin.
Later on Friday after Council president Nawaf Salam read a press statement on 9/11, Inner City Press asked him about the previous afternoon's Sudan consultations, reminding him that at his beginning of presidency briefing he'd committed to come out and speak after the Sudan session.
Salam nodded and said there had been three consultations. Of these, asked about possible outcomes by Inner City Press, Salam predicted a follow up and outcome only on changing the Abyei mission's mandate, reportedly to include some border review. Apparently there are other priorities in the Security Council at present.
Meanwhile fallout continues from the currency war between Khartoum and South Sudan. Khartoum set a deadline to convert to or exchange into its new currency; this led to crowds outside the Central Bank in Khartoum pleading for an extension that was not granted. And so it goes.
