In UN Budget Wrangling on Longest Night of Year, of Bob Orr, Re-Costing & Ban Ki-moon's Mobility, No Answers on South Sudan

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, December 21 -- With the UN budget fight heating up as Christmas approaches, Saturday night found UN Deputy Permanent Representative gathering in groups on the second floor of the North Lawn building.

  There was Peter Wilson of the UK and Alexis Lamek of France, and their EU counterpart Ionnis Vrailas. There was US Joe Torsella, making analogies to the budget deal struck in Washington: can the UN do it?

  In fact, UN DESA has commented on US budget woes, as Inner City Press covered. They slammed the US for the impending fight of raising the debt ceiling. So who's mocking whom?

  And amid calls for cuts, including layoffs for some UN Security officers on January 2, why is the UN moving to send 500 blue helmeted guards to Central African Republic with mandates limited to offering protection to a smaller number of UN staff? Click here for that Inner City Press story.

In the UN budget process, disputes include $160 million of "re-costing" -- adding back to the budget after Secretary General Ban Ki-moon claimed cuts -- and the mobility plan of Mister Ban, himself so mobile as to be out of town. 

  Ban's Controller was present Saturday night along with other staffers. Apparently there were no UN Spokespeople working -- Inner City Press' questions from Saturday morning about the crisis in South Sudan went entirely unanswered for eight hours and counting.

  When Inner City Press spoke with diplomats working on the budget Saturday night, there were many critical comments about Ban's "corporate partnerships" proposal, some calling it an attempt to get a promotion for longtime UN official Robert Orr, said to be very close with Ban. 

 Orr himself was not seen, at least by this reporter in several hours, in the North Lawn.

 This is not a good time for the UN to have no one on duty answering press questions, and no noon briefing scheduled for Monday, December 23 as protested by the Free UN Coalition for Access, @FUNCA_info.

  As many of complained, the 2014-15 UN budget is over 600 paragraphs, 85 pages. Diplomats wandered around with random pages. A table was set up with mint Oreo cookies and dried green mangos; pizza boxes came in, and boxes of Starbucks coffee. America may run on Dunkin but the UN is all about, well, destroying neighborhoods (as one anti-Starbucks diplomat put it).

Notably absent from budget negotiations on Saturday, even on the sidelines, were the Staff Union, whose incumbent is battling to stay in control or block the recognition of Ticket 1, and those ostensibly covering the UN.

At least two Permanent Representatives were present: Benin, and Fiji as chair of the Group of 77, which Bolivia takes over on January 1. Finland's Deputy Permanent Representative Janne Taalas, the chair of the Budget Committee, joked to Inner City Press that it should get done since "this is the longest night of the year." Watch this site.

   

At UN, Sri Lanka Gets Legal Committee Chair, Absurd, Sartre-Translator Gets Human Rights, Fifth to Finn

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, October 1 -- UN dysfunction was on display on the last day of General Debate speeches and beginning of Committee work on Tuesday.

 

  Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's spokesperson Martin Nesirky postponed the day's briefing in deference to the speech by Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu, but then talked over Iran's reply. (Click here for Inner City Press questioning andvideo.)

  After Iran's talked-over reply, there was back and forth between Libya's past and current Ambassador Dabbashi and Bolivia's Sacha Llorenti. Evo Morales had noted that the change of regime in Libya led to changes in who got the oil; Dabbashi said Bolivia was mourning the loss of Gaddafi as a funder.

  Later in the afternoon new President of the General Assembly John Ashe lavished praise on Dabbashi, a bit over the top and seeming to take sides, given the context. But perhaps Bolivia will get a committee, as Dabbashi got the chair of the First Committee. (A diplomat from Iran became the rapporteur, with Montenegro as a vice chair.)

  Palitha Kohona of Sri Lanka, a country recently lambasted by the UN's Navi Pillay for intimidating witnesses to the killing of tens of thousands of civilians in 2009 was named the chair of, what else, the UN's Sixth (Legal) Committee.

  In his speech, Kohona said these are challenging times for particular member states. You don't say. But despite Pillay, Sri Lanka seems to still "have" Ban. He is withholding the most recent report on action and inaction in Sri Lanka in 2009. What leverage will the Sixth Committee give Sri Lanka?

  The Fifth (Budget) Committee strangely stayed with the Western European and Other Group, WEOG -- from Germany's Peter Berger to Finland's affable Janne Taalas. But voting on the vice chairs was put off, as it was for the Second Committee, with Senegal as the chair.

  A Sartre-translator from Bulgaria got the Third Committee, with vice chairs from Lebanon and Iceland. The Fourth, on Decolonization, went to El Salvador. Western Sahara, Gibraltar, and even Puerto Rico, get ready. Watch this site.