By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, April 29 -- When Abdullah M. Alsaidi announced earlier this year he was resigning as Yemen's Ambassador at the UN, where he had represented President Ali Abdullah Saleh since 2002, it was described as an act of principle, akin to Ibrahim Dabbashi and Shalgam resigning as Libyan diplomats in protest of Gaddafi's crackdown.
But sources well placed on Yemen inform Inner City Press that before his loud “resignation,” Alsaidi was informed by letter that it was time for him to retire. For some time, Alsaidi had been seeking a job with the UN. If he simply retired, he would have to return to Yemen. So he resigned.
Soon thereafter he was hired not by the UN but by the International Peace Institute across the street, which announced on its website that
“Ambassador Alsaidi was the Permanent Representative of Yemen to the United Nations from 2002 until his resignation last week in response to the killing of dozens of demonstrators by pro-government forces in Sanaa... Terje Roed-Larsen, IPI's President, welcomed Ambassador Alsaidi, saying, 'His considerable experience both as a high-level diplomat and as an academic will be a strong asset for IPI in helping the UN and its partners better understand ongoing developments in the Middle East.'”
Some find it particularly appropriate that Alsaidi lands at IPI under Roed-Larsen, who is viewed as an ally of Saudi Arabia, among others.
Recently Roed-Larsen traveled to Bahrain. While the UN has said publicly that Roed-Larsen traveled in his “personal capacity” and not in any connection with his part time post as Under Secretary General and representative on Security Council Resolution 1559, Inner City Press has been told some of the backstory.
Sources say Roed-Larsen asked to travel to Bahrain in a UN capacity, but that the UN said no. He then traveled there, taking one of the UN staffers from his Resolution 1559 post who, sources says, traveled with a UN Laissez Passer. While in Bahrain, Roed-Larsen presented himself as a UN official.
How the UN is served by allowing a person to simultaneously be an Under Secretary General and run a think tank some view as partisan directly across from the UN, and to blur the roles, remains a mystery.
At the UN noon briefing of April 29, Inner City Press asked Ban Ki-moon's spokesman Martin Nesirky to confirm or deny that Roed-Larsen took to Bahrain with him a UN staff member using a UN Laissez Passer. Nesirky said he didn't know, and that if he find out he will say. Watch this site.
