By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, August 26 -- Six hours after UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's plan for "post-conflict" Libya was published by Inner City Press, Ban purported to take questions, along with the author's report Ian Martin and waning mediator Abdul Ileh Al Khatib.
But Ban's departing deputy spokesman Farhan Haq refused to allow the Press any questions about the report, choosing instead to select questions about topics other than Libya, and from another questioner about one aspect of the "leaked" report.
Then Ban walked away from the microphone -- "Pyongyang style," as one wag put it. Inner City Press continued to seek answers to questions raised by the reports, including the suggestion that independent media should be monitored
"It's an internal report," Ian Martin said. But it was produced with UN money, by consultants beyond the UN who brag publicly about it, as Professor Dirk Vandewalle has at Dartmouth University.
In two noon briefings during what is said to be his final week at the UN, Haq refused to answer questions about the report. His associate, on a day Haq skipped, claimed that it "is not a UN document."
Ban's also departing political chief Lynn Pascoe, when Inner City Press asked him August 25 about his Department's then unpublished report said "I won't say anything on the fantasy that some of you spin out." But click here to view the "fantasy," unspun.
How can the UN be considered a public institution if it creates plans in secret? If it then denies that the plans are even UN documents?
If refuses to take questions about those plans when disgusted whistleblowers who feel they work for a dying organization -- more precisely, an institution which is being killed -- choose at risk of retaliation to leak them?
Ban Ki-moon's UN has hit a new low. Click here to read the Martin (and Vandewalle) reports, and ponder why the UN cannot or will not take questions about them.
