By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, May 6 -- Not only US Ambassador for Management Joe Torsella, but also Permanent Representative Susan Rice, issued positive comments Monday about the UN Budget Committee resolution on the report of the Senior Advisory Group on Peacekeeping Operations.
Ambassador Rice's statement said the adopted SAG recommendations "extend the typical troop rotation period from six to twelve months -- saving millions and allowing troops on the ground to gain valuable expertise."
During the negotiations on the report, it was noted that many Troop Contribution Countries, particularly in Latin America, have constitutions prohibiting deployments for 12 months.
And in the Budget Committee meeting on Monday, held while the UN Security Council was meeting on Eastern Congo and the death of a UN Peacekeeper in Abyei, it was said that exceptions to 12 month deployments can be issued by Ban Ki-moon.
So that's what the word "typical" means.
Going bigger picture, Togo spoke up after adoption to say the UN should pay interest on what it owes to Troop Contributing Countries, due to delays.
Likewise on the idea that a Troop Contributing Country would lose funding if it deployed with broken Contingent Owned Equipment, Department of Field Support Under Secretary General Ameerah Haq read out a long clarification, for which India's Deputy Permanent Representative Manjeev Singh Puri praised her.
(The Group of 77 took a reservation to it, citing with approval Haq's clarification, while Togo called it "unjust.")
This type of specificity did not apply, it seems, to Ambassador Torsella's statement, which thanked "all members of the SAG." Video here, from Minute 25:35
Did this include Shavendra Silva of Sri Lanka? We'll await clarification before saying more. (This was only the Budget Committee approval - the full General Assembly is still required, perhaps Friday, chairperson Miguel Berger said.)
The larger irony is that while the US Mission here praised the UN process, and has yet to criticize the online auctioning for $26,000 of an internship "in the UN," to benefit the RFK Young Leaders of the RFK Center, in Washington White House spokesman Jay Carney was very quick to disbelieve UN Human Rights Council appointee Carla Del Ponte on strong suspicions of the use of sarin gas by the Syrian opposition, not the government.
Carney said, "We are highly skeptical of any suggestions that the opposition used chemical weapons. We think it highly likely that Assad regime was responsible but we have to be sure about the facts before we make any decisions about a response."
But that skepticism is not applied to smaller but more concrete example of seeming corruption involving the UN, or to attack in and by the UN on smaller, investigative press, from raids on offices to anonymous trolling by Western wire services that dominate the UN Correspondents Association, trying to get the investigative press thrown out of the UN. We'll have more on this.
