By Matthew Russell Lee, Exclusive
UNITED NATIONS, October 7 -- A member of the UN's Somalia Eritrea Monitoring Group has reportedly used UN SEMG time and supplies for unrelated advocacy regarding Eritrea, Inner City Press learned and then obtained documentation of, exclusively put online here.
Sources told Inner City Press that Dinesh Mahtani, the finance expert on SMEG and previously on the DR Congo Sanctions group, was found requesting favors from a member state, to which the SEMG reports. Here is a document:
a letter from Dinesh Mahtani, ostensibly in his SEMG role, saying that former Eritrean official Ali Abdu "has great potential to play a stabilizing role in Eritrea with the country possibly headed to an uncertain period in its history." Eritrea says: regime change, on UN letter-head. Eritrea's complaint, also obtained by Inner City Press, isnow put online here.
This is hardly the first controversy in the SEMG -- but usually the members wait until they are off or on their way off the Monitor Group to “let it all hang out,” as one source put it of previous SEMG chair Matt Bryden.
The current chair, Jarat Chopra, has faced complaints from Somalia, also exclusively reported by Inner City Press.
Bryden's departure was telegraphed in remarks to, and a report by, Inner City Press on July 24, 2012 when Security Council members from three countries gave Inner City Press exclusive and negative reviews of Bryden's performance.
"He's leaving," one of them said dismissively and definitely of Bryden. There was snarky speculation Bryden may have been angling for a book deal, or a post with a group like HRW.
With Bryden the questions were larger of leaking, of micro-managing the Eritrean air force and more. Those about Mahtani, the sources tell Inner City Press, are "bigger... regime change on UN letterhead." We'll have more on this.
