At UN, Herve Ladsous Covered Up in Jonglei, on Sri Lanka, Proposed Drones, DR Congo Echoing His Rwanda Role: Ladsous' Online Life Part 2

By Matthew Russell Lee, 2d in Series

UNITED NATIONS, August 11 -- There were bodies to be hidden or covered up in South Sudan by Herve Ladsous in January 2012. 

  His Department of Peacekeeping Operations did nothing amid mass murder of members of the Murle tribe in Pibor in Jonglei State. 

  Ladsous' response? To downplay the numbers, call them false, then refuse to answer questions.

  Inevitably this echoed Ladsous' role as France's Deputy Permanent Representative at the UN during the Rwanda genocide, when he argued for the escape of the genocidaires into Eastern Congo.

  And that's where he headed later in January 2012, meeting "la classe politique" and, it now seems clear, beginning planning the colonial military approach coming to a head in August 2013: a French high commander of an all-African Intervention Brigade charged with "neutralizing" other Africans.

  How else to explain Ladsous' interventions at a "Responsibility to Protect" conference that month in New York, where one observer had him calling France's air drop of weapons into Libya "humanitarian goods"? More reported him denying the death figures in Jonglei state, but offering none of his own.

  Inner City Press asked Ladsous for his figure, when Ladsous held a press conference on February 7, 2012. (At that time, Ladsous answered Inner City Press questions. When and why he stopped will be addressed later in this series.)

   Ladsous had denied "thousands;" the UN had counter-bid "dozens." Now Ladsous said "hundreds." Was it a cover up? What was the figure?

  Since a Sri Lankan military figure depicted in Ban Ki-moon's own report as engaged in war crimes had become a senior adviser on Peacekeeping Operations, Inner City Press asked Ladsous about that. But he wouldn't give a substantive response.

  Ladsous' spokesperson Kieran Dwyer told Inner City Press to "ask the Senior Advisory Group" - which had no spokesperson.

  By February 23, Ladsous refused to comment at all on the de facto banning of military figure, after extensive reporting by Inner City Press. UN official Margot Wallstrom, by contrast, called it "important." She is no longer with the UN.

  One of the few other media tweets about Ladsous, from his press conference, was his bragging about cutting DPKO's budget - it was by Voice of America, run by the US State Department. The US wanted and wants to be seen to be saving money, but does not yet oversee Ladsous: A Problem from Hell.

  Jump-cut to March 23, something of a watershed: Inner City Press exclusively reported that Ladsous proposed to the C-34 Committee on Peacekeeping the use of drones. While many diplomats in the meeting panned the proposal to Inner City Press, Ladsous refused to explain it. (Now he's selected, for 10 million Euros, the Selex ES Falco, which has previously crashed in Pakistan and Wales.)

  On March 27, Inner City Press for the first time referred to Herve "Drone" Ladsous. The rest is history, of a sort -- or at least, is the next installment in this series. Watch this site.

   

As Samantha Power Cites Syria & South Sudan, UN Has Photo Ops But No First Amendment: A Problem from Hell, Day 1

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, August 5 -- There were four new Ambassadors presenting their credentials Monday to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, but the managed media throng was for only one: Samantha Power of the United States.

Earlier on Monday, also at the UN, the foreign ministers ofBrazil, Uruguay, Argentina and Venezuela (which Power called a "regime" in her Senate confirmation hearing) had told a different gaggle of media about meeting Ban about US spying and Edward Snowden.

  But Power in her remarks in the UN lobby did not allude to any of that. She cited "mass atrocities in Syria and South Sudan," saying that the US would work with the UN on these. Inner City Press wondered: why South Sudan and not Khartoum, Darfur?

  Why no mention of the Eastern Congo, including the UN still supporting the Army units which committed mass rape in Minova in November, 2012?

  Power took no questions. The next stop was up on the 38th floor, the ritual photo op. First former US official, now the UN's top political adviser Jeffrey Feltman came in, and Ban's chief of staff Susana Malcorra, from Argentina. What might her views be of l'affaire Snowden if not to say, Malvinas?

  Then came Samantha Power's husband Cass Sunstein. One wonders what he would make of the UN's lawlessness, represented by its terse "dismissal of claims" about bringing cholera to Haiti, or its lack of a Freedom of Information Act or even of content neutral accreditation and due process rules for journalists.

  (This, the new Free UN Coalition for Access is raising, following the UN's failure to respond to the NYCLU last year, here. The slogan? The First Amendment Stops on First Avenue.)

  The credentials were presented; the media was swept out with the option of waiting an hour for Argentine president Cristina Fernandez or rushing to the Security Council stakeout for Argentine Ambassador Perceval's read-out of a Council press statement condemning the attack on the Indian consultate in Jalalabad, Afghanistan.

  One can imagine a defense of all this: there are complaints that the UN is getting too anonymous, now there will be some complaints about a cult of personality. But to some it's the worst of both worlds: while the US is the superstar at the UN, other countries are ignored, even as they are spied on.

The application of Samantha Power's book A Problem from Hell to the UN would be interesting. We'll be here. Watch this site.

   

In DC, Power Is Confirmed Without Apology, Goldman Sachers to Geneva, Morocco Bundled (Georgia Out, Lithuania In)

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, August 2 -- The day after the US Presidency of the UN Security Council ended, the US Senate confirmed Samantha Power to replace Susan Rice as Permanent Representative to the UN.

  After breathless narratives of widespread opposition to Power, after her confirmation hearing performance at the committee level, she sailed through 87-10.

  In a memorable moment at her hearing, she said not only that America is the greatest country on earth but that it never has anything to apologize for.

  At the UN covering the Security Council, Inner City Press was watching the hearing on C-SPAN, and something sounded wrong. Didn't Bill Clinton apologize, for example, for the US' votes at the UN to shrink the UN Peacekeeping force during the genocide in Rwanda?

  Wasn't that what Samantha Power's book "A Problem from Hell" was all about? There was grumbling from within the delegation of Rwanda, members of the Security Council for the next year and a half.

  It will certainly liven things up. Some predict that Susan Rice's commitment on issues relating to Sudan and South Sudan will wane -- that may be an over-personalization of the US Mission's work -- and others predict that the whole Problem from Hell approach will focus only on Syria.

  But probably one should judge or predict a person on a body of work rather than this hearing performance, or what Sri Lankan Tamil activists saw as Power's strange silence during what they call their genocide, in May 2009. This finger-pointing at silence extended to Obama himself.

  And Obama the same day nominated as a US Ambassador to the UN in Geneva a former classmate who worked at Goldman Sachs, Pamela K. Hamamoto. 

  Another campaign bundler, Dwight L. Bush, Sr., was nominated as ambassador to Morocco. (While this Bush is not one of those Bushes, the pervasiveness of this process is why some call this a one party system.)

  Coming so quickly after Susan Rice's gambit to include a human rights monitoring component in Herve Ladsous' mission in Western Sahara -- such a component exists at his mission in the Congo but is mostly used on an ideological basis -- the financialization of the Morocco post seems telling. On the Security Council, Rwanda has a year and a half, while Morocco has only half a year left.

  And while we'd previously reported Georgia -- not Georgia on my mind, but Tblisi -- as a candidate for the Eastern European seat on the Council, Inner City Press spend part of an American night on July 29 hearing how ECOSOC would be enough for now for the Georgians, and Lithuania edged out by Vuk Jeremic for President for the General Assembly would now get the Council seat. Watch this site.

Footnote: rather than look to the past, even the recent past of Power's confirmation hearing, why not look forward, and not only at the "big picture" items on the Security Council's agenda? As Inner City Press exclusively reported yesterday, the US had thought France would draft a resolution on Central African Republic in August. Due to vacations, they plan not to. Might that change? Shouldn't it?

   

American Month Ends with John Kerry - & Hate Speech? - in UN Security Council, Humility on Syria, Samantha Power in the Wings

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, July 29 -- As the United States' month as President of the UN Security Council comes to a close, it's time to review it as best as we can. Secretary of State John Kerry came once, on a July 25 day trip, to chair the meeting on Africa's Great Lakes region.

  While there, the Democratic Republic of the Congo's foreign minister said that all rebellions in the region bear the same "genetic signature." 

  After diplomats from a number of member states complained this was hate speech, even "genocide talk," Inner City Press asked the US Mission to the UN if it had a comment. Apparently it had none, as least as of yet.

  And outside the US Mission on July 25, after a two hour wait for a 45 second photo op of Kerry and Syria oppositionist al Jarba, Kerry told Inner City Press he hadn't heard the comment. Fine - but it was in the DRC's written speech, and is on UN Webcast.  UN video here at 1:06:20 

 (The US Mission did, we note, provide a response from Kurtis Cooper about cholera in Haiti at the beginning of the month, and from Payton Knopf about the rapes in Minova in November by the Congolese Army near the end of the month, here.)

  Ambassador Rosemary DiCarlo handled the presidency ably, held a number of stakeouts; Jeffrey DeLaurentis held one, and answered questions on Darfur. But what's been done on the seven peacekeepers killed there?

  Syria was and is the "big one." Interesting, at the General Assembly session on July 29, the US was humble. While the UK's Mark Lyall Grant and even France's fill-in for Gerard Araud went to the front and inveigh, Ambassador DiCarlo spoke from her seat, later in the meeting. Will this be Samantha Power's approach when, as seems sure to happen, she arrives?

  Among diplomats asked Monday by Inner City Press about Samantha Power, a number noted things she'd said at her confirmation hearing. That the US has nothing to apologize for about the Rwanda genocide struck some more than others as a false note, inconsistent with her book "A Problem from Hell." But what will she do, once at the UN? Watch this site.

Footnote: there are three mandate renewals to be "done" on July 30. Of them, Inner City Press is told that the Cote d'Ivoire renewal might, just might, have "explanations of vote," on the draw-down of peacekeepers and on "ICC issues." Others say it will just fly through without a single explanation. We'll see.