Syria Tells UN 3211 Civilians Killed by "Terrorists" Who Stole 2256 Government Vehicles

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, March 31 -- In the run up to Kofi Annan's briefing of the Security Council on April 2, Syria late on March 30 wrote to the Council and Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to say that nearly 6000 people have been killed in the country by "terrorists."

This seeks to counter the numbers of civilians killed provided in briefings by High Commissioner on Human Rights Navi Pillay and outgoing head of UN Political Affairs Lynn Pascoe. Inner City Press has obtained the letter and puts it online here, before the UN has made it publicly available.

The Syrian letter states figures for killed civilians, police, army, then women and children, presumably already included in the civilian number. It also states for example that 2256 government vehicles have been stolen.

Meanwhile as the Friends of Syria grouping meets in Istanbul, Kofi Annan is not there. Instead, present is his Arab League selected deputy Nassar El-Kidwa, who is not allowed into Syria. Some call it a dysfunctional mediation. But not, it seems, Bashar al Assad. Watch this site.

At UN, Quotes of Peacekeepers to Syria Point to DPKO Chief & His Country's PR?

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, March 30 -- Amid complaints that Kofi Annan's mission to the Syria is meant to keep Assad in power, the UN has repeatedly refused to answer Press questions about who is part of Annan's team or whether the UN has any role in selecting or vetting them.

Now there are quotes from a self-described senior Western Security Council diplomat that the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) is sending an advance team to Syria, with an eye to shifting some 250 observers from its UN Peacekeeping Missions UNIFIL in Lebanon and UNDOF in the Golan.

Because this seems a strange way for the UN to be communicating, Inner City Press on March 30 asked UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's deputy spokesman Eduardo Del Buey to confirm these DPKO moves, and to state whether the chief of DPKO is sharing such information with all 15 Security Council members or other the Permanent Representative of his own country, which has appointed the last four Under Secretaries General for Peacekeeping in a row.

Del Buey paused and then told Inner City Press to ask the Kofi Annan team: "There are reports that are coming from leaks or reported leaks from the Council... I believe that Mr. Annan is coordinating the efforts in Syria and I would leave it to his spokesman to comment on that. "

While Annan's spokesman Ahmad Fawzi has for example been willing to confirm that Annan recently gave a six month UN contract to Martin Griffiths, who resigned from his last job in Geneva amid an embezzlement scandal, this is a question about UN DPKO and its chief, Herve "The Drone" Ladsous, so named because he had proposed the use of drones and even the interception of communications, without specifying if the information collected would go to all member states or only his own.

Ladsous pointedly refuses to answer questions about his drone proposal, or other questions about peacekeeping, in Haiti and South Sudan.

As first reported by Inner City Press, when Annan conducted meetings at the UN with diplomats from among others Syria, China and Iran, he then met with Ladsous, the only one of the meetings the Press was not allowed to photograph.

Friday Inner City Press asked Del Buey, what is Ban Ki-moon's role in all this? Has Ban, as reported, lost control?

Del Buey said that Ban and the Arab League appointed Annan, but Annan takes it from there: "Mr Kofi Annan is managing, is directing, is responsible for the peace process in Syria."

Pro-Assad media, it should be noted, describe Annan as the "UN" envoy, and as Inner City Press first reported, Annan's Arab League selected deputy Nassar El-Kidwa has not been allow into Syria.

El-Kidwa is in Istanbul, meeting with the opposition and Friends of Syria. Kofi Annan, not surprisingly, has not gone: his moves are not favorably viewed by the opposition.

Intrigue and secrecy in mediation is one thing. But from a UN peacekeeping chief and his country's Permanent Representative, they may be quite another. Watch this site.

After UK Open to Press, US Moves to Cut Horizon, Feltman on the Way?

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, March 29 -- The UK's month atop the UN Security Council began with Welsh cheese and ended with cocktails, but in between was more dogged transparency than is usually seen at the UN stakeout.

UK Permanent Representative Mark Lyall Grant and his Deputy Philip Parham appear to have set the record for Q&A availabilities, summarizing closed door consultations and even answering questions in their national capacity except when about "specific individuals," even Yemen strongman Ali Saleh.

The UK's main recent reform, the so-called horizon briefing by the Department of Political Affairs, faces a second erasure from the United States, which takes over the Council in April.

The UK began the innovation in November 2010; the US didn't follow in December. But after that all Council member held one, a session in which DPA can bring up topics of interest even if not on the Council's formal agenda. These have included piracy and the Sahel and here today, gone tomorrow coups d'etat like Mali's may turn out to be. But the horizon briefings are useful.

Thursday at the UK's End of Presidency reception Inner City Press learned that, at least for now, the US has not included any horizon briefing on its agenda for April. It's strange, since the US controls the Department of Political Affairs, for now through its former Ambassador to Indonesia Lynn Pascoe and prospectively, as first reported by Inner City Press, by Jeffrey Feltman its Assistant Secretary of State for the Middle East.

Inner City Press was first on that story, and got much feedback on it in the course of Thursday night's reception. "A perfect election year appointment," one Ambassador told Inner City Press. A red flag for at least some in the Arab and Persian world, said another.

There was also feedback on Inner City Press' story of only a few hours previously, how Ban Ki-moon lost control on Syria to his predecessor Kofi Annan. "If you appoint someone like that," a well placed Permanent Representative told Inner City Press, "what do you expect?" Indeed.

Drones too were discussed, including with regard to procurement. Herve "The Drone" Ladsous, the fourth Frenchman in a row atop UN Peacekeeping, blithely proposed them in the C-24 committee. Members complained to Inner City Press, including on who would get the information, beyond DPKO and France? So far the questions have not been answered.

Members of the UK Mission commiserated that only two resolutions were adopted under their presidency. OK, if that's the measure -- but there were some of the longest Presidential Statements ever, including one on Afghanistan measured at eight minutes in length. Anyway in terms of transparency to the press and thus the public, the UK's number of stakeouts blew away for example France, whose Permanent Representative Gerard Araud did only three during his last month as President.

There was some push back, frankly, for having reported that Araud rather than speaking openly held a confidential or background briefing earlier on Thursday. But the French mission has played thug not only with UN media but with its own Francophone advocates for the indigenous. We repeat what one of the complainants said: when one reads propaganda attributed to a "Western diplomat" tomorrow, you will know where it is from. Watch this site.

On Syria, Ban Can't Vet Those Given UN Contracts by Annan, He's Lost Control

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, March 29 -- Skeptics in the UN Security Council and elsewhere have begun to question whether Syria's Assad government agreed to the Six Point Plan of UN - Arab League Joint Special Envoy Kofi Annan because it dropped the "political transition" previously demanded by the Arab League and others, including it seemed Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

Inner City Press on Thursday asked Ban's deputy spokesman Eduardo Del Buey if Ban still wants to see a "political transition" in Syria as he had previously said.

Del Buey answered that Ban"agrees with the six-point plan. Any process that takes place in Syria must be a Syrian-led process."

Sources tell Inner City Press that Ban has "lost control" of the mediation process. After the General Assembly passed a resolution calling for a joint envoy, Martti Ahtisaari and Kofi Annan were under final consideration.

It was expected that Annan would say no, he wouldn't want to work under his successor Ban Ki-moon. But Annan said yes and the rest is history: he is not under Ban. To surprise and some unhappiness in the UN, Ban has "lost control."

Previously, Inner City Press asked if Ban would be given a copy of Assad's response before Kofi responded to and commented on it. There was no clear "yes."

Now Ban has had to echo or even qualify Annan's response. He has lost whatever control he had. Inner City Press understands from multiple sources that Annan is proposing various formats or modalities of monitors to the Assad government, apparently without the concurrence or even prior knowledge of Ban and the UN.

Ban apparently does not even have a role in reviewing who is given six month UN contracts by Annan, including most recently Martin Griffiths who would not pass muster of any UN recruitment, having resigned from his last job atop the Center for Humanitarian Dialogue amid an embezzlement scandal. (Click here for Inner City Press' exclusive report yesterday.)

From Thursday's UN noon briefing transcript:

Inner City Press: On Syria, these are two connected questions, I will start with small. I have heard that Kofi Annan is basically in charge of the hiring of the team, he has hired a man named Martin Griffiths about whom there is some controversy of his past job. I have been told that he couldn’t be hired by the UN given how he left his past job, but he has been hired, he is on a UN contract, I am told, for six months regardless of what happens with Mr. Annan’s work. So, I wanted to know, what is the UN’s role in vetting and screening before people are given UN contracts to work with the Joint Special Envoy’s team?

Deputy Spokesperson Del Buey: I’ll have to check on that for you, I don’t have the details with me.

Five hours later, even after the UN put this transcript online, no information had been provided.

Inner City Press: Okay. And the other one is kind of bigger. Some are saying that the Kofi Annan’s six-point plan has noticeably dropped this idea of political transition, which was in the Arab League plan. The question is: does the Secretary-General, is he looking for political transition in Syria, or is the Kofi Annan six-point plan, which doesn’t include political transition and could conceivably result very much in Mr. Assad remaining in power with a ceasefire and the other things in the plan, which side is he on? Does he think there should be a transition or not?

Deputy Spokesperson Del Buey: Well, the Secretary-General agrees with the six-point plan. Any process that takes place in Syria must be a Syrian-led process. He has always called on the Government of Syria to listen to its people; and the hope is that they will be able to negotiate a way forward towards a democratic future where human rights of all are respected and where different communities can cohabitate in peace.

Inner City Press: Just to put a point on it, in his view, Mr. Assad could remain in power despite the previous statement that he lost his humanity and various statements that Ban Ki-moon has made?

Deputy Spokesperson Del Buey: Well, that’s not a decision for the Secretary-General to make. That is a decision for the Syrian people to make, and he hopes that a negotiating process will take place and that the Syrian people will be able to make their views known, and elect a Government of their choice.

This is different from what Ban use to say. But as people close to Ban tell Inner City Press, Ban has lost control. Watch this site.