By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, September 19 -- Two weeks after Inner City Press wrote that Finn Georg Charpentier would be named deputy chief to Brit Ian Martin in heading up the UN's mission in Libya, on Monday Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's spokesman Martin Nesirky confirmed both postings, then refused to answer criticism about them. Video here, from Minute 25:38.
Inner City Press asked for confirmation of its next scoop, that the Number Three official in the UNSMIL mission will be the German Hansjoerg Strohmeyer, chief of the Policy Development and Studies branch with the UN Office for the Coordination of Political Affairs."
Nesirky said, "I've read out two, it's not enough for you, you want the third." But Inner City Press reported on Charpentier getting the deputy post, from sources inside the UN Department of Political Affairs, back on September 1.
As Inner City Press wrote on September 14, "Three top UN jobs on Libya -- four if you count [Canadian elections expert Craig] Jenness -- and no Africans or Arabs, after all the planning was done in New York by a Brit."
Twice Inner City Press asked Nesirky to respond to criticism from within the UN's own Department of Political Affairs that Africans, and Arabs, have been cut out. Nesirky repeated, these are international civil servants. Europeans only?
Many questions were raised about Charpentier's closeness with the Khartoum regime of Omar al Bashir, indicted for genocide by the International Criminal Court. This is the best the UN can find?
Since Ian Martin erred by writing in his report, leaked to and published by Inner City Press, that NATO would have a continuing role in Libya, it appears that Ban looked for a non-NATO member -- but only as far as Finland.
Earlier on Monday, French foreign minister Alain Juppe took five questions at the Council on Foreign Relations, mostly about Palestine. Inner City Press was there, but not called on by fawning moderator James P. Rubin to ask about Libya. In his opening remarks, Juppe said that NATO will keep bombing until all Qaddafi supporters give us. He called South Africa "the most reluctant" of the IBSA countries, but said that on March 19 at the UN South Africa "got convinced." And so it goes.
