By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, August 31 -- As India's month as president of the UN Security Council ends, one thing that distinguishes it from others is accessibility to the press by Permanent Representative Hardeep Singh Puri.
When he would come to the Council stakeout to read out a Press Statement -- eight times in August -- he would accept and even invite questions in other topics, from Libya to Syria to The Sudan and Kosovo.
In one memorable exchange, questions were lobbed from the side of the stakeout and Hardeep Singh Puri turned and answered them, Phil Donahue-style.
It can be contrasted, as simply one example, to France's most recent presidency in May, when Gerard Araud held only three stakeouts and tried to avoid press questions even then. Once he read out a Press Statement in French, then handed it over to a staffer to read the English translation, during which time Araud left to not take questions.
Araud has long been out of town, first on vacation and now hearing Nicolas Sarkozy's speech at the "19th Ambassadors' Conference," and so was not present Tuesday night at India's end of presidency reception, unlike the Permanent Representatives of such Council members as China, Bosnia, Gabon, Lebanon and the UK, among others.
India's Deputy Permanent Representative introduced Inner City Press to the diplomat who'd filled the position in the early 1980s, Vinay Verma, who recounted tales of a "bipolar world" which is now "shifting to the East."
Verma remembered meeting Warren Christopher at the old US Mission, where out of protocol Christopher came down to the street to greet him and showed family photographs upstairs. He told of a US Ambassador to Nicaragua just after the Sandinista revolution, who was so diplomatic with Daniel Ortega et al. that Jesse Helms blocked him for his next assignment, in Morocco. He spoke of buying the land under the Indian Mission, and the apartment where he lived and the new DPR now lives.
In the early 80s, he said, India as the head of the Non Aligned Movement was courted by both the Soviet Union and the US, on Security Council issues ranging from Namibia and apartheid to, as now, Israel and Palestine.
On that, Inner City Press polled some Security Council ambassadors about the upcoming vote or votes on Palestine in late September. Most said that to grant Palestine Observer State status in the General Assembly would be a no-brainer.
But it seems that more than just the US would balk at a request for full UN membership in the Security Council. More on this soon -- for now, here's hoping that future presidents of the Security Council later this year and next take and answer as many questions as Hardeep Singh Puri did in this just past August.
