By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, August 7, updated -- The UN's state-media reporting of its concern about an attack in Abidjan which killed seven Ivorian soldiers is incomplete and therefore misleading.
The UN says that the "head of UNOCI, Bert Koenders, strongly condemned the attack," without mentioned that it was less than three weeks ago that Koenders blithely proposed cutting a full battalion from Abidjan saying things are so much better there. Click here for that July 17 report by Inner City Press.
If Koenders was so wrong in his assessment of conditions in the financial capital of Cote d'Ivoire, some ask why believe his denial of ONUCI wrongdoing during the deadly refugee camp attack here Duekoue?
An investigation had been promised, amid on the record quotes by survivors that ONUCI peacekeepers pushed them off trucks and back into the mob to be beaten.
But two days after the promise, Koenders said everything was fine, denied all allegations of wrongdoing or even negligence. Even the UN's response to Inner City Press' was bungled, perhaps intentionally so, click here for that.
While among a few well run UN mission there are others plagued by incompetence and complacency, the UN Mission in Cote d'Ivoire has had and still has a conflict of interest.
The head of UN Peacekeeping is Herve Ladsous, the fourth time in a row the post has gone to a Frenchman. DPKO was used to oust French opponent Laurent Gbagbo after a tight election, and now the Mission has reportedly stood by while Gbagbo supporters, already in a camp, were attacked and at least six killed.
Then Koenders denies the allegations, and doesn't even take back his now clearly erroneous assessment of the situation in Abidjan.
That the UN "reports" on itself often corrupting. When it is done by or for DPKO, whose chief refuses to take Press questions based on critical coverage, it is even worse.
Koenders, most than other SRSGs, seems to be taking all of his lead from Ladsous. Whom does it serve? Watch this site.
Update: further information comes in, not from DPKO, but from Ivorian source, who think the attack was to coincide with the National Day, which will be celebrated too at the UN in New York.
