By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, August 16 -- When the UN on Friday, August 12 announced it would on Monday start cutting daily noon briefings by 40%, despite events in Syria, Sudan and Libya, and Inner City Press asked if this was an attempt to cut costs, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's acting deputy spokesman Farhan Haq replied, "I have been here as a Spokesperson for 12 years, and every summer...there are times when we cut back on briefings." Transcript here.
The claim that this cut back takes place "every year" was repeated, along with Inner City Press' question to Haq, "How did you decide to say that journalists here want less information rather than more?"
Beyond the fact that the (Arab) Summer of 2011 might be different than past summers, what with Ban Ki-moon supposedly coordinating military action in Libya under Security Council resolution 1973, Inner City Press has gone back to the UN's archive of noon briefing transcripts for the past ten years and found that only in 2009, under Ban's previous spokesperson Michele Montas, were some briefings canceled in August. See links here.
Under Kofi Annan, since at least 2001, daily briefings were held in August, by his spokemen Fred Eckhard and Stephane Dujarric, who is still with the UN. Then under Ban Ki-moon and Montas, in 2009, briefings in August were reduced to Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
Even in 2010, under Montas' successor Martin Nesirky, briefings were held daily in August. Now in 2011, with Nesirky out from now until the end of August, his deputy Farhan Haq announced on August 13 that briefings would be reduced -- and said it had always been this way. But see archived daily briefings links.
And so on August 16, as rebels closed in on Tripoli assisted by NATO's -- Ban Ki-moon's? -- air strikes and the news was full of war crimes in Southern Kordofan amid inaction by UN peacekeepers and of killing in Syria, there was no noon briefing. Inner City Press submitted some questions to Haq by e-mail, copying Nesirky.
On whether Ban's post-Gaddafi adviser on Libya Ian Martin could brief the press and how large his UN funded team is, there was no answer. Likewise on a briefing by departing UN Controller Jun Yamazaki, no answer, not even a date by which the UN's top budget official will leave. (His job has already be advertised in The Economist.) No answer on a question about top UN humanitarian Valerie Amos.
