At Rwanda Genocide Panel, UN Official Cheng-Hopkins Names France, But No Follow-Up or Press Q at IPI

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, April 22 -- When a panel on "Twenty Years after the Genocide: What are the Lessons Learned from Rwanda?" was scheduled across First Avenue from the UN on April 22, the dispute earlier in the month between Rwanda and France, about the latter's responsibility, seemed sure to come up.

  Inner City Press RSPV-ed to the International Peace Institute and watched the opening statements by webcast (while simultaneously live-tweeting the US State Department's daily briefing). Before the Q&A segment, before the moderator asked people to raise hands for questions, Inner City Press arrived, then indicated that it had a question. (Two, actually, including the April 3, 2014 cable from the UN in Burundi about the government arming its youth wing that Inner City Press published but on which the UN spokesperson has allowed but declined to answer questions.)

  The first round went to insiders, including the chief of UN Peacebuilding Judy Cheng-Hopkins who to her credit asked about Jeune Afrique quoting a French soldier that he was ordered to fight with the RFP outside Kigali, and to help the genocidaires themselves.

  It seemed this required an answer from the panel. But the only answer was about the United States, that it was gun-shy after Somalia and "Bush" said the US had no interest in the country. Actually, it was under Bill Clinton.

  But the IPI moderator next called on people who raised their hands long after Inner City Press, including another UN staff member. The time expired, and the moderator said Inner City Press could come up front and ask a question one on one. Well, no. The UN Host Country Com'te began meeting on the US's denial of Iran's ambassador-nominee's visa.

  Inner City Press has RSVP-ed for a number of other upcoming IPI events. At the last one it attended, panelist Herve Ladsous of France, the head of UN Peacekeeping, answered Inner City Press' question on when UN Peacekeeping will go after the Hutu FDLR militia by saying, "Mister, I never answer your questions." Watch this site.

   

On Syria, Is "UN Would Take 2 Weeks to Report on Chemical Weapons" Channeled by Insiders To Justify Faster US Action?

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, August 30 -- Would US President Barack Obama wait two weeks before taking military action on what his administration repeatedly on Friday called clear and convincing evidence that Syria's Assad government used chemical weapons on August 21?  It seems unlikely.

  And so what to make of the flurry of spoon-fed UN insiders all parroting the same line on Friday afternoon, that the UN report will take two weeks according to a "UN diplomat"? Or that UN team chief Ake Sellstrom wanted four weeks? These "reports" and echoes have the effect of validating the US taking action sooner, casting the UN as too slow.

As Inner City Press separately reported after speaking, on the record, with Syria's Permanent Representative to the UN Bashar Ja'afari, Damascus' position is that the US has made itself the secret judge of secret evidence. This has echoes of the FISA courts, and also the NSA spying scandal. But few link these.

No, the fix is in, the players are playing their parts.

    Earlier in the week, much was made of the Syrian government's delay in granting the UN's request for its chemical weapons inspection team to visit al Ghouta.

Inner City Press asked UN spokesperson Farhan Haq at Tuesday's noon briefing when it was that the UN formally requested access to al Ghouta -- on Saturday, August 24 or before? Video here, from Minute 12. Video with captions, on Inner City Press YouTube channel, here and embedded below, with transcript.

Haq read out a press statement from August 22, in which Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said a request is being sent. Then, Haq said, Ban's High Representative on Disarmament Angela Kane "stepped forward with the request" -- on August 24, Saturday.

It was granted the next day.

Inner City Press asked again, was there any formal request by the UN other than Ban's press statement, before August 24? Haq called this "semantics." But when Inner City Press asked Ban's spokespeople to respond to widely circulated press releases about a request being made to Ban, the UN says the actual formal request had not been received yet, and so: no comment. Why should the UN say it must be different for Syria?

How could the UN be so sloppy? Or was it sloppy?

  While the delay to Sunday (or Monday, when the team got out and said, if this YouTube video on which Haq declined comment when Inner City Press asked is not false, that they are not even looking at what type of munition was used in part because they didn't want to put it in their white UN 4 by 4) is now an element in the case for missile strikes, the UN didn't formally ASK until Saturday, in the person of Angela Kane

   Inner City Press covered Kane when she was head of Ban's Department of Management, including an investigation by the UN Office of Internal Oversight Services for favoritism in the UN's so-called UMOJA computer management system.

  When Japan's Yukio Takasu returned after a pause from being his country's Ambassador to the UN to take over Kane's job, Kane's native Germany lobbied for her to get another top UN job. She was offered one in Lebanon, as Inner City Press reported, but did not want it. So she "got" Disarmament.

  This connection must be noted: it was Germany which got Kane this job, in the same way that France installed Herve Ladsous as the fourth French head of UN Peacekeeping in a row, and the US picked Jeffrey Feltman, formerly the State Department's chief on the Middle East to replace B. Lynn Pascoe as Ban's political chief.

  So the fact that Germany has expressed a willingness to join a coalition to strike Syria, without UN Security Council approval, and the Germany's Angela Kane's role in the "UN's" chemical weapons inspection team should be noted.

  But by most media covering the UN, it is not. When Inner City Press even mentions Ladsous' and UN Peacekeeping's French connection, Ladsous refuses to answer questions, and some media, including the French wire service Agence France Presse on one of whose management boards Ladsous served, have even filed complaints with the UNagainst Inner City Press. 

  This is dysfunction, and is now being countered by the Free UN Coalition for Access, @FUNCA_info.

  Another major wire service, Reuters, joined in the second of AFP's complaints. On August 26 Reuters based a piece essentially selling or planning for the legality of military strikes on Syria without Security Council or even General Assembly approval around, as lead, a comment by the Council on Foreign Relations' Richard Haass.

  But on that CFR call, as noted by Inner City Press, was Judith Miller. Given her role during the lead up to the US intervention in Iraq, one might think this would have been included in an overly-long rehash story. But no. 

 Notably, Reuters' UN bureau has been shown to have spied for the UN, handing over an internal anti-Press document of the UN Correspondents Association (which under 2013 president Pamela Falk of CBS hosted Syrian rebel Jarba for what it called a "UN briefing") to UN official Stephane Dujarric. Story here, audio here, document here.

This beat just goes on. Watch this site.