By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, September 22 -- Shrinking from his earlier plan for Libya including 200 military observers, UN envoy Ian Martin on Thursday told Inner City Press that 146 "international staff" as well as 50 local hires are being proposed to the UN's Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions, for action as early as next week.
Inner City Press asked Martin a series of questions, about his leaked report and the exclusion of Africans and even Arabs from his Mission's leadership, to his view of the role of NATO and of the International Criminal Court. Video here.
Martin claimed that his statement in his August 22 report that NATO "would" have a continuing role had been validated by the Security Council -- on September 16. But was it appropriate for the UN Secretariat to be positing continued NATO bombing as a "factual statement?"
On Third Avenue on September 19 Martin graciously answered Inner City Press' request for confirmation that Number Three official in the UNSMIL mission is the German Hansjoerg Strohmeyer by saying "There is no number three."
On September 21, Martin acknowledged that Strohmeyer has been given the chief of staff post. What's in a name?
Inner City Press asked, now that UN mediator Al Khatib has left, reportedly miffed at being shouldered out by Martin and others, will Martin offer mediation for the armed conflict still taking place around Gaddafi supporters' last bastions, now being bombed by NATO? If the Libyans ask, Martin said, and they haven't.
On whether Gaddafi and the other indictees should be sent to the ICC, Martin said it is entirely up to the Libyans. Inner City Press asked for his assessment of trying them in Libya or the Hague, but Martin would not answer.
Martin said he couldn't confirm what Chad's President Idriss Deby told Inner City Press on September 19, that there remain 400,000 Chadians in Libya, some of whom were recruited as mercenaries by the Transitional National Council and not only Gaddafi. Martin said he couldn't confirm who fought as mercenaries, nor the numbers of sub Saharan Africans remaining.
He visited a jail last time he was there. Where are those people now? Watch this site.
