UN Peacekeeping Committee Rift on Ladsous' Drones, Despite Spin

By Matthew Russell Lee, Scoops

UNITED NATIONS, March 13 -- The UN's use of "unmanned aerial vehicles" is spun as without controversy, for example by having a recent report spoon-fed to Reuters and a few others but never at a question and answer press conference. 

 But on March 13 at the UN's Special Committee on Peacekeeping Operations it was clear again that controversy and push-back remain, not least on how UN Peacekeeping under Herve Ladsous would use the information.

 This issue was raised by C-34 members when Ladsous first pitched his drone plan; Ladsous refused to answer Press questions about it. Now Herve "The Drone" Ladsous had gone so far as to try to block the Press' camera, Vine here.

Back on February 24, 2015, Inner City Press asked the UN:

Inner City Press: This has to do with Jane Holl Lute and this report about technology and peacekeeping which some call the “drone report” because it proposes drones.  I’m wondering one, can she do a press conference on it?  How much money was spent on the report and why was it released in this kind of quiet or selective way?

Spokesman Dujarric:  I’ve heard your request and we will pass it on to DPKO.  

  But no response was ever given, nor press conference held. Now maybe some Western countries can trade other issues behind closed doors to clean up or cover up Ladsous' drone mess. But why in secret? Why not answer questions?

  This hypocrisy might help explain it:

When the UN Security Council visited the Central African Republic earlier this week, the issue of the UN underpaying the peacekeepers there was not raised, publicly or at all.

  But back in UN headquarters in the C-34 Special Committee on Peacekeeping Operations, discontent with DPKO as run by Herve Ladsous was mounting. On CAR, one issue about which C-34 exclusively told Inner City Press was Ladsous' DPKO's refusal to comply with the recommendations of the Senior Advisory Group on Peacekeeping Operations to pay a risk premium to peacekeepers in the dangerous missions.

   Under Ladsous, DPKO tells Troop Contributing Countries with their soldier in CAR that it is not dangerous there -- while saying quite the opposite elsewhere. Several delegates called this rank hypocrisy. 

   Some thanked Inner City Press for publishing the Office of Internal Oversight Services report, here, on how positions in the UN missions in Haiti and the DR Congo were sold by Cote d'Ivoire's Deputy Permanent Representative Ouattara.

 Now DPR Ouattara has become the charge d'affaires since Permanent Representative Bamba, who was not involved the corruption, has been ousted, alleged due to a speech on his watch calling Western Sahara the last colony in Africa (this was, but is not longer, Cote d'Ivoire's position).

  Ladsous, as shown by multiple videos including this andthis and this Vine, refuses to answer Press questions.

   The UN Security Council creates peacekeeping operations -- so what is their role in ensuring that DPKO pay the peacekeepers fairly, including in accordance with the Special Advisory Group's report and related General Assembly resolution? What is the Security Council's oversight role, for example on the report of demonstrators in Gao in Northern Mali being shot?

  This month's Security Council president, the French Mission, told Inner City Press that whether or not the Security Council will get any information from the Gao report is entirely up to Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. How can that be? And what of Ladsous, and ultimately Ban, claiming CAR is not dangerous, in order to underpay the peacekeepers, as described to Inner City Press by C-34 delegates? We'll have more on this.

   In the UN's first sub-basement on March 13, some delegates suggested that the C-34's forthcoming - or not - report would be “the worst ever.” Watch this site.

   

UN Tells Peacekeepers the Central African Republic Is Not Dangerous, To Limit Their Pay: Where is the UN Security Council on This?

By Matthew Russell Lee, Scoop

UNITED NATIONS, March 13 -- When the UN Security Council visited the Central African Republic earlier this week, the issue of the UN underpaying the peacekeepers there was not raised, publicly or at all.

  But back in UN headquarters in the C-34 Special Committee on Peacekeeping Operations, discontent with DPKO as run by Herve Ladsous was mounting. On CAR, one issue about which C-34 exclusively told Inner City Press was Ladsous' DPKO's refusal to comply with the recommendations of the Senior Advisory Group on Peacekeeping Operations to pay a risk premium to peacekeepers in the dangerous missions.

   Under Ladsous, DPKO tells Troop Contributing Countries with their soldier in CAR that it is not dangerous there -- while saying quite the opposite elsewhere. Several delegates called this rank hypocrisy. 

   Some thanked Inner City Press for publishing the Office of Internal Oversight Services report, here, on how positions in the UN missions in Haiti and the DR Congo were sold by Cote d'Ivoire's Deputy Permanent Representative Ouattara.

 Now DPR Ouattara has become the charge d'affaires since Permanent Representative Bamba, who was not involved the corruption, has been ousted, alleged due to a speech on his watch calling Western Sahara the last colony in Africa (this was, but is not longer, Cote d'Ivoire's position).

  Ladsous, as shown by multiple videos including this andthis and this Vine, refuses to answer Press questions.

   The UN Security Council creates peacekeeping operations -- so what is their role in ensuring that DPKO pay the peacekeepers fairly, including in accordance with the Special Advisory Group's report and related General Assembly resolution? What is the Security Council's oversight role, for example on the report of demonstrators in Gao in Northern Mali being shot?

  This month's Security Council president, the French Mission, told Inner City Press that whether or not the Security Council will get any information from the Gao report is entirely up to Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. How can that be? And what of Ladsous, and ultimately Ban, claiming CAR is not dangerous, in order to underpay the peacekeepers, as described to Inner City Press by C-34 delegates? We'll have more on this.

   In the UN's first sub-basement on March 13, some delegates suggested that the C-34's forthcoming - or not - report would be “the worst ever.” Watch this site.

   

UN's “Pro Drones” Report Spun to Reuters, No Jane Holl Lute UN Press Conference

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, February 23 -- When is a UN report particularly dubious? When its release is controlled by the UN Department it is supposed to be scrutinizing, and its closest sycophants are spoon-fed the report rather than holding an actual Press conference.

  So it was on February 23 with the UN's report on technology and UN Peacekeeping headed by Jane Holl Lute, which Inner City Press has already dubbed the “drone report.” When Inner City Press first reported on doubts about member states on the C-34 committee on peacekeepin about Herve Ladsous pushing through drones in former French colonies without approval, Ladsous stopped answering Press questions.

  Instead, Ladsous holds private briefings for Reuters, Agence France Presse and sometimes Voice of America, to spin his point of view. But when the UN paid Lute for a report on technology, it was supposed to be independent.
  Not. On February 23, after a closed door briefing, service Reuters reported that "Doctor Lute told reporters” how good drones are, adding that Russia is opposed because it could lose money. (The opposition of Rwanda, defrauded by Ladsous on the FDLR, was not explained, but who's counting?)

  Notably, Reuters never reported on OIOS finding that posts were put up for sale in Ladsous' mission in Haiti and DRC, where he used drones against M23, but not the FDLR. This is a scam, all around.  But why hasn't Jane Holl Lute, the “zero tolerance” American, held a real Press conference? Watch this site.

 After the UN claimed to be jointly fighting the FDLR rebels with the Congolese Army FARDC, then to be supporting the FARDC to do so, on February 6 Inner City Press asked UN Spokesman Stephane Dujarric more questions, and he said "the military actual fighting has not, as far as we know, has not commenced." Video here. 

  This has been reiterated repeatedly by the UN: no action has been take by the FARDC against the FDLR. Nevertheless once again on February 23 Reuters made it appear that the Congolese Army under Joseph Kabila IS fighting the FDLR, with no mention of UN Peacekeeping chief Ladsous' history and seeming double game. With two editors, Reuters"reports" that

"President Joseph Kabila said last week that the operation had started without MONUSCO. A government spokesman said Congo "renounces, in the most official manner, the support of MONUSCO to track the FDLR. We are going to track them alone."

  So, did the operations start? On February 23, Inner City Press asked UN Spokesman Dujarric:

Inner City Press: On DRC.  The Radio Okapi which I understand is a UN-supported media in the Congo has reported abuses about the FDLR in and around Lubero.  Since I would assume that means that MONUSCO [United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo] is aware of them and it’s been said that they have a protection of civilians mandate totally outside of the neutralization of the FDLR, has MONUSCO done anything about these UN essentially reported —

Spokesman Dujarric:  Valid question.  I have not gotten an update from MONUSCO today, but we will try to extract one.

 Five hours later, nothing. On February 18, Inner City Press asked Dujarric the question of why Herve Ladsous' MONUSCO has not itself taken action on the FDLR:

Inner City Press: A spokesman for the Congolese Government, Lambert Mende, has said that MONUSCO [United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo] is free to do its own operation against FDLR [Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda].  He says that the Government has nothing against that.  And I know that it's come up that, somehow, the UN, because of its stated human rights concerns is not going to work with the Government to go after the FDLR.  But, if the Government there is essentially giving its consent, what am I missing?  Why isn't the UN doing what was said it would do following 2 January?

Spokesman:  I would… I would check with the Mission itself.  I have nothing to say from here.

  The UN - and Ladsous, given his history - SHOULD have something to say.

  * * *

  Reuters has again misrepresented the UN's and Herve Ladsous' (non) enforcement of the human rights due diligence policy. The anonymously trolling Reuters correspondent -- reviving that on January 26, after Reuters' Stephen J. Adler et al were told but did nothing -- "reports" that

"The U.N. peacekeeping mission in Congo threatened in 2013 to withdraw support for two Congolese battalions accused of involvement in the mass rape. The mission decided to keep working with the battalions after 12 senior officers, including the commanders and deputy commanders, were suspended and about a dozen soldiers were charged over the rapes in Minova."

  This is propaganda -- only two lower ranking soldiers were convicted. The Reuters implication is that Ladsous' DPKO is tough on human rights: false.

  On January 22  Ladsous made a speech about freedom of the press in the Democratic Republic of the Congo Thursday to the US Security Council, and made excuses for not acting to “neutralize” the Hutu FDLR rebels as the UN did the largely Tutsi M23. 

Then Ladsous came to the Security Council stakeout, ostensibly to take questions.

  Inner City Press asked, “On the neutralization of the FDLR, what is the hold up?”

  Ladsous said "I don't respond to your questions, Mister." Video hereand embedded below.

   Then Ladsous turned and gave the question to Reuters, the same trolling correspondent. When that back and forth was over, Inner City Press asked if any of the countries in the UN's Force Intervention Brigade are well than willing to attack the FDLR, as senior diplomats at the UN have told Inner City Press.

   Ladsous refused to answer this question, and gestured that Ban Ki-moon's envoy to the DRC Martin Kobler, standing behind Ladsous at the stakeout, shouldn't answer it either. Reuters took or was given another question, distancing the FDLR from genocide.

   Finally Inner City Press asked both men what if anything UN Peacekeeping has done as the Kabila government has frozen the accounts of the Panzi hospital for rape victims.  Ladsous waved this off -- for months he waved off Press questions about mass rape in Minova by his partners in the Congolese Army, video here -- and walked away with this spokesman. 

 (One can only imagine the advise this “communications professional” is giving Ladsous. Perhaps he can help Ladsous address his history with Hutu groups as evidence in this memo. These are Press questions.)

   

At UN, Herve Ladsous In Softball Interview Says He Is "Expanding Eavesdropping," Later Claimed UN Role in Haiti Cholera Not Proved

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, November 15 -- The last time UN Peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous was scheduled to take questions from the press, instead he lunged forward and blocked the Press' camera, then canceled his Q&A stakeout on Mali. Vine here.

  Since then more peacekeepers have been killed and injured but Ladsous, unlike his also-French predecessors Alain Le Roy and Jean-Marie Guehenno, has not done a stakeout to speak up for those put under his command.

  Instead, Ladsous now tried to do softball interviews with hand-picked correspondents. Even that works out badly -- perhaps very badly. 

 In a recent “interview,” in which for example UN Peacekeeping bringing cholera to Haiti is vaguely mentioned but not followed up on, it slips out that Ladsous is expanding “signal intelligence, using high-tech surveillance of communications such as telephone eavesdropping.”

  How can it be that at the same time that the UN General Assembly is considering a Brazilian and German drafted resolution on Privacy in the Digital Age, Ladsous is expanding eavesdropping and wire-tapping? On whose authority?

  This was from a softball interview, which didn't mention that in 1994 Ladsous supported and pushed for the escape of genocidaires from Rwanda into Eastern Congo where he now uses the Force Intervention Brigade as, in his words, a “useful tool.” Nor does the interview mention Western Sahara, much less the problematic light thrown on Ladsous by recently leaked cables.

  More recently, Ladsous was asked not only about UN Peacekeeping bringing cholera to Haiti -- Ladsous insisted that it hasn't been proved -- but also about proceeding with drones without C-34 member states' approval, and about the expanding rape scandals. On these, Ladsous claimed he is setting up reviews.

  But Ladsous for months refused Press questions about, and covered up, the 130 rapes by the DR Congo Army in Minova. Video compilation here. 

  Is it any wonder that his UNAMID in Darfur tried to quickly deny that mass rapes took place in Tabit in Darfur? 

 Is this performance acceptable? To whom? Watch this site.

   

As UN Security Council Hears of His Failures to Protect Civilians, Herve Ladsous Floats Out, Flew FDLR

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, July 28 -- When the UN Security Council held a day-long debate on UN Peacekeeping on July 28 more than forty countries spoke, from India warning of an unsustainable shift into internal conflicts to the US citing reports of UN Peacekeeping missions failing to protect civilians.

  But during that US speech, the head of UN Peacekeeping Herve Ladsous left the debate. Earlier in July he refused to answer about peacekeepers killing civilians in the Central African Republic. Video here.

  Before that for months Ladsous refused to answer on his partners in the Democratic Republic of the Congo committing more than 130 rapes in Minova in the DRC,video compilation here.

  More recently Ladsous has refused to answer the complaint of Rwanda, which organized the July 28 meeting, that his mission in the DRC flew the leader of the Hutu FDLR militia from Eastern Congo to Kinshasa despite him being on the UN's sanctions list, and the rejection by the Security Council's sanctions committee of the request for a waiver from Ladsous - with his own history in the region, here.

 There are without question many courageous and committed UN peacekeepers. But when the person in charge refuses to answer basic questions, there is a problem.

  These are questions that should be answered. Inner City Press will continue to pursue answers.

  A representative of NATO spoke, without addressing the aftermath of its “peacekeeping” in Libya.

  Egypt, speaking for the Non-Alignment Movement, said the UN Secretariat should not begin “streams of policy” without first getting approval. As Inner City Press reported, Ladsous had push-back, not approval by the C-34 group of states for his proposal to use drones, but proceeded with it anyway.

  When Inner City Press reported this, and Herve “The Drone” Ladsous as a nickname, Ladsous began to refuse to answer any Press questions, saying “I do not respond to you, Mister.”

  Will he respond to the critiques made during the July 28 debate? Watch this site.

   

On UN Peacekeeping, India's PR Ashoke Mukerji Contrasts DRC Force Intervention Brigade, Ambivalent South Sudan, Defensive Golan: Reform Needed

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, February 25 -- When the UN Committee on Peacekeeping began on February 24, Indian Permanent Representative Asoke Mukerji asked a poignant question: "If there are casualties among the traditional peacekeepers from action by armed groups in MONUSCO, due to this ill-conceived dual mandate approved by the Security Council, who, Madam Chairperson, will be accountable?"

Mukerji was referring to the "Force Intervention Brigade" which deployed attack helicopters in Eastern Congo against the M23 (but not yet the Hutu FDLR militia), and the unanswered question about whether its inclusion inside the MONUSCO mission makes all peacekeepers there "combatants" or parties to an armed conflict for purposes of international law.

  The UN Department of Peacekeeping under Herve Ladsous had refused to answer this question; Ladsous himself refuses to answer Press questions after Inner City Press reported on his statements and actions as French Deputy Permanent Representative at the UN during the Rwanda genocide in 1994, see sample document here.

  Should UN Peacekeeping be run, four times in a row now, by a country with a long colonial history in Africa, where most of the missions are? That type of question should be addressed in this C-34 committee, but isn't.

  Still, Mukerji's speech stood out, contrasting the "robust attack posture advocated in DRC, the ambivalent posture evident in South Sudan, and the defensive posture in the Golan." Ambivalent is a deft word; may the Indian peacekeepers killed in Akobo in South Sudan in December 2013 rest in peace, and have died for something, including needed reforms in UN Peacekeeping. Watch this site.

   

At UN, Farewell to Mr Coffee, Indians Make French Connection, Diplomats' Immunities Compared

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, January 25 -- In the blur of UN receptions, in the daze of National Days and farewells to departing Ambassadors, some cannot be missed. So it was this week for India's Republic Day on January 23, and the farewell to Colombia's Nestor Osorio, heading to London to represent his country there.

  When Osorio arrived three years ago to take Colombia's Security Council seat, it took him some time to get his feet under him. But he was unfailingly polite, and when he left the Council he became president of ECOSOC, most recently brokering a compromise on language about Palestine in a resolution. 

  In London, he told Inner City Press on January 24, the issues are more concrete: increasing the number of direct flights to Bogota, talking up and getting support for the process with the FARC.

  On the FARC, Osorio was able to fill in the gaps for the Free UN Coalition for Access of a VICE "Correspondents Confidential" piece about a journalist being briefly taken hostage there. The UN will be a little sleepier without Osorio.

  India is a power rising if not already risen: even late in the liquorless reception there was the President of the General Assembly and his entourage, Iran's newsy Permanent Representative Khazaee, and various Ambassadors talking to UN Department of Field Support's Ameerah Haq, showing off their support to mission in Mali and South Sudan.

  Talk there was not only of the Indian diplomat Khobragade who was arrested, strip seached and indicted, then told if she comes back into the US she will be arrested. Numerous attendees commented to Inner City Press about its contrast with the French diplomat Romain Serman, taken into New York police custody for attempting to purchase cocaine (and not cooperating with the arresting officer).

  But when Serman left the US, unlike Khobragade he was allowed to come back in, as France's consul in San Francisco. Attempts to obfuscate or even censor this storywere panned amid samosas and skewers of vegetables and tofu. The contrast between the censor and Osorio could not be more clear. 

  Colonialism mixed with increasingly unjustifiable P3 status breeds contempt. When will that farewell be? Watch this site.

Footnotes: Inner City Press in early 2011 nicknamed Ambassador Osorio "Mister Coffee," and since then has wondered if it was too harsh. But Osorio never let it stop him from answering questions, or explaining his positions. 

  This is in contrast for example to UN Peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous. After Ladsous proposed in the C-34 committee the UN's use of drones, and Inner City Pressspoke with member states who complained, Inner City Press called him Herve "The Drone" Ladsous. 

  This led to push-back and even threats bordering on censorship. It is to combat this, and the other threats cited above, for which the Free UN Coalition for Access was formed, and offers Osorio a 21 espresso salute.

   

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.