By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, August 7 -- The UN's Herve Ladsous, whose spokesperson Kieran Dwyer has belatedly admitted the UN Mine Action Services' role in Somalia sharing genetic information with the US FBI, if only to a friendly scribe, hasyet to explain meeting with indicted war criminal Omar al Bashir last month.
Ladsous doesn't answer Press questions, video here; now he appears to be gone from the UN
On the August 6 noon briefing, Inner City Press asked:
Inner City Press: on the visas for Darfur, I wondered whether Hervé Ladsous, when he met with President Bashir, said that one of the topics was letting in international staff. Did the issue of non-DPKO [Department of Peacekeeping Operations], or i.e., UNHCR staff, come up? And what else was discussed at that meeting, given a lot of interest, in UN officials meeting on a strictly necessary basis with ICC [International Criminal Court] indicted individuals? Thank you.
Spokesperson Martin Nesirky: On the meeting that Under-Secretary-General Ladsous had with President Bashir, I will check with my colleagues on whether there is anything further we could say on that.
More than 24 hours later, there was no response at all. But Ladsous' spokesperson Kieran Dwyer did answer a question Inner City Press publicly asked Nesirky on June 24, about a whistleblower's complaint Ladsous received. First, on June 26, Inner City Press was told:
Subject: Your questions on Somalia
From: UN Spokesperson - Do Not Reply [at] un.org
Date: Wed, Jun 26, 2013 at 9:43 AM
To: Matthew Russell Lee [at] innercitypress.com
From: UN Spokesperson - Do Not Reply [at] un.org
Date: Wed, Jun 26, 2013 at 9:43 AM
To: Matthew Russell Lee [at] innercitypress.com
The Department of Peacekeeping Operations does not discuss internal communications or emails received with media correspondents.
Still, Inner City Press kept asking, including UN envoy Nicholas Kay (who replied it was a question "for New York") and wrote a five part series. Then Ladsous' spokesperson Dwyer spoon-fed a misleading half-admission to another correspondent.
After Inner City Press noted it, Ladsous' office belatedly, just as the August 7 noon briefing was to begin, gave an answer to Ban Ki-moon's spokesperson Nesirky.
But no answer on Ladous' meeting with ICC indictee Bashir, what was accomplished on visas. And where IS the body, that Ladsous in Sudan bragged about keeping?
Another Ladsous spokesman, Andre-Michel Essoungou, known for grabbing the UN TV microphone in December to try to avoid an Inner City Press question about Ladsous covering up the 135 rapes by the Congolese Army in Minova, was floating around on August 7, food related interchange with another Ladsous client.
It is distasteful, just as Ladsous' meeting with Bashir was found by many to be disgusting. This is leading somewhere. Watch this site.
Footnote: After Andre-Michel Essoungou's December 2012 microphone grab and a complaint from the new Free UN Coalition for Access, the UN's Stephane Dujarric admitted it was wrong. But, he said, he has spoken -- not with Ladsous, but Essoungou.
Well, Essoungou interjected himself again recently, to steer a question to Agence France Presse. This is what allows and encourages the spoon-feeding.
No answers Wednesday afternoon as FUNCA raised, including in advance, the fact of 15 journalists with three seats at the Security Council stakeout, next to the "Turkish Lounge" with three tables and ten chairs, entirely unused. This lack of response can be called the Ladsousification of the UN. Watch this site.
