After UN's North Korea Resolution & Reaction, Quiet Committee Meeting

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, January 30 -- Eight days after the UN Security Council adopted a resolution about North Korea's missile launch, the 1718 or DPRK Sanctions Committee met in the UN's North Lawn building.

  The new chairperson of the committee, Luxembourg's Sylvie Lucas, emerged past 5 pm from the meeting room. She accepted the Press' invitation to provide a brief summary, as her predecessor Ambassador Cabral of Portugal used to do.

  She said the first part of the meeting was simply acclimating the five new members to the work of the Committee. The head of Panel of Experts, who recently met with Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, made a presentation. Then, she said, the discussion was about the resolution and implementation.

   Inner City Press asked her if there had been any discussion of North Korea's statements after the resolution. No, she said. Hong Kong company? No. Missile launchers? No. 

  A gaggle representing, almost without exception, Japanese media hung on her every word, and thanked her afterward. This is an active or even omnipresent part of the press corps not treated well enough by the UN nor, it seems, its partners.

  Earlier on Wednesday, the Security Council's president for January Masood Khan of Pakistan answered a DPRK question by saying that the members of the Council have been monitoring the statements from Pyongyang.

   But apparently this monitoring is done country by country, or at least not in the sanctions committee. Anyway, it is a start. Watch this site.

From the US Mission to the UN's January 22  transcript:

Inner City Press: China had said it would only agree to a resolution that was, in its view, proportionate to this launch. Do you think that this response-they're claiming that it doesn't really-it's putting new names under existing sanctions but it's not really new sanctions. Is it a proportionate response?

Ambassador Rice: ...Clearly there are new sanctions in this resolution. By definition, any time additional entities or individuals or items are banned from action that they would otherwise not be banned from, that's a new sanction, by definition. So, we don't need to have a semantic debate and discussion here.

But this is also a resolution that built upon 1874 and 1718 and was a substantial tightening of the existing regime, which as you know is already a very robust sanctions regime. And we think the tightening of it and strict implementation of it, in and of itself, are very valuable steps. We worked quite closely and cooperatively, as I said, not only with China but other partners in the P5, and the Republic of Korea and Japan and other interested members of the Security Council to arrive at this outcome. We think it is a strong and credible outcome worthy of the collective effort we all invested in it. Thank you very much.

Summary from the January 22 stakeout of RoK PR Kim Sook:

Inner City Press: It seems the resolution was negotiated between the US and China.  What was South Korea's role in those negotiations?  Are you satisfied by the process?

Amb. Kim Sook: I appreciate the demonstration of solidarity in the security council in the process of negotiating the language of the resolution, and I especially appreciate the role that was played by the United States and China, but at the same time, this is the concerted effort of all the security council members.  So, we did what we did, and every member had played a positive role, I would say.  I'm not going to go into detail about that, but we did actually participate, and I think I contributed in a positive way.

On Rule of Law, UN Cites Haiti But Not Cholera or IDP Deaths, Due Process Banned

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, January 30 -- With the "Rule of Law" the topic in the UN Security Council on Wednesday, one might have expected such legal topics as the UN's responsibility for introducing cholera into Haiti or the application of its supposed Human Rights Due Diligence Policy to be on the agenda.

   But, at least in public, there was only one speaker: Deputy Secretary General Jan Eliasson. Then the Security Council's 15 members went into the smaller consultations room. 

  The representative of a country which attended but had to leave after Eliasson finished asked Inner City Press, "an issue like this has to be behind closed doors?"

  Inner City Press later put this to January's Security Council president Masood Khan, on camera. He affably replied that since it was an "interim report," it was closed consultations. But the report was commissioned a full year ago. 

  Is it that the Security Council doesn't trust the other members of the UN?

  And so we are left with Eliasson's three page public statement. It is full of buzzwords but mentions a few of the countries where there are UN peacekeeping missions: Liberia, South Sudan, Cote d'Ivoire and Haiti. 

 Of course of Haiti it does not mention accountability for cholera.

   Nor on Cote d'Ivoire does it mention UN envoy Bert Koender's cover up of the murders at the Nahibly IDP camp and the UN peacekeepers' role. How can the UN preach rule of law if it doesn't practice it itself?

   A simple but currently open example of this is the UN's refusal to answer what it rules of due process are when a complaint is filed with it against an accredited journalist.

  On June 20, 2012 Voice of America filed a request with the UN's Stephane Dujarric, citing its bureau chief Margaret Besheer, asking that Inner City Press'accreditation be "reviewed." 

  Voice of America said it had the support of UN Correspondents Association "colleagues" at Agence France Presse (Tim Witcher) and Reuters (Louis Charbonneau, who had already filed his own complaint, secretly of course).

  Dujarric thanked VOA's Steve Redisch for the complaint and said he'd call him about it -- but never told Inner City Press.

  After the unconstitutional complain was exposed and questioned from Capitol Hill -- Voice of America is a US government agency under the State Department -- Inner City Press' accreditation was extended. But, according to VOA documents, Dujarric assured VOA that Inner City Press had received a warning.

  What type of warning? Did it, still unconstitutionally, concern the content of coverage?

  For now, despite a direct request from the New York Civil Liberties Union, and now the Free UN Coalition for Access, Dujarric and those above him have not answered the basic question of due process: that is, of the rule of law. Watch this site.

UN Leaps to Congolese Army's Defense After Ladsous Refused All Questions

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, January 30 -- The dysfunction of the UN and its Department of Peacekeeping Operations is on display, now regarding a leaked document concerning the UN's partners in the Congolese Army, and the FDLR militia.

  Inner City Press on January 29 asked Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's deputy spokesman Eduardo Del Buey about the document. The question was put to him because DPKO chief Herve Ladsous has said openly and on camera that he will not answer any Inner City Press questions.

  Ladsous directed his spokesman to grab the UNTV microphone to try to stop Inner City Press from asking a question about the Congolese Army and the 126 rapes in Minova.

  Since DPKO from the top down will not answer any questions, question are asked at the UN noon briefing. Of late, despite "we'll look into it" interim responses, no answers come.

  On January 29 Inner City Press asked the UN about "an e-mail from within MONUSCO which shows awareness by the UN that FARDC Congolese army units are in support of actively helping the movements of the FDLR, i.e., the militia in eastern Congo that is linked with the genocide in Rwanda, and I wanted to know what is the UN’s response."

  But neither then nor in the 23 hours since did the UN provide any response. Del Buey said, "we’ll have to speak with DPKO on that, but have you spoken with DPKO yourself?"

Inner City Press: I have, as you know, I have asked Mr. Ladsous questions a number of times that he refused to answer.

Deputy Spokesperson: But, have you spoken with DPKO, the media people of DPKO?

Inner City Press: Last time, my last interface with them was them taking the microphones, so questions couldn’t be asked at the Security Council stakeout, so I am asking you.

  Ban Ki-moon's deputy spokesman said, "Well, I’ll have to find out." But for 23 hours, nothing.

  Instead, from Kinshasa and in French, the MONUSCO mission has chosen to belatedly comment on the document, and attack Inner City Press in the process. For now only say, DPKO and Ladsous have only themselves to blame.

The extraordinary refusal to answer any Press questions, even a softball question on Abyei in September, and now failure to provide answers through Ban Ki-moon's spokesperson's office casts MONUSCO's belated protest in a different light.

  And what about the 126 rapes in Minova on which Ladsous had refused questions, even taking friendly media into the hall? Video here, slightly more elaborated here.

  Did the rapes not happen?  A fish rots from the head. 

From the UN's January 30, 2013 transcript in New York:

Deputy Spokesperson Eduardo Del Buey: I was asked yesterday about a document, attributed to the United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO), which would confirm a cooperation between the Forces démocratiques de libération du Rwanda (FDLR) and the Forces armées de la République démocratique du Congo (FARDC). The Mission says that the document is a falsification and there is no doubt that the purpose of this venture is to discredit the Congolese Armed Forces. The UN Mission strongly denounces this attempt at misinforming the public. We have a press release with more details in our office.

Inner City Press: Thanks, I have seen the MONUSCO press release and I have a couple of questions. One is a longer-standing, outstanding FARDC question, which is about these rapes that happened in Minova all the way back in November. And I am wondering, I have gone back over what, even what Mr. [Hervé] Ladsous said at the stakeout. He said that, by now, the probe would be finished, so what I wanted to know is: where is the probe? What findings were made of which units of the FARDC were involved in the rapes? Does MONUSCO still work with them, and it is interesting that they respond so quickly to defend the FARDC, but where is their finding about the rapes that they acknowledge took place when the FARDC controlled Minova?

Deputy Spokesperson Del Buey: Well, Matthew, I think you will understand there is a slight difference in the amount of time it takes to investigate a major crime and the amount of time it takes to investigate a paper that has been falsified. When I have the information on that, I will get back to you.

  Since November, we've been waiting. Watch this site.

On Syria, Brahimi Tells ICP Atrocities on Both Sides, "Not in Number But Yes"

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, January 29 -- After Lakhdar Brahimi briefed the UN Security Council on Tuesday, Council President Masood Khan of Pakistan came out to speak to the media.

  Inner City Press asked him about the follow up meeting of Brahimi and the Permanent Five members of the Council: didn't this devalue the Council as a whole?

  Khan said no, the P5 meeting could be very valuable.

  When Brahimi came out, the Department of Political Affairs spokesman Jared Kotler is the one who chose the questions. They went one way; afterward Brahimi walked over to Inner City Press, what was the question?

"Did you tell the Council that both sides have committed "equally atrocious crimes"?

Not by numbers, Brahimi said. But yes, atrocities.

During the meeting, a Security Council diplomat told Inner City Press that while Brahimi was pushing for a resolution based on the Geneva declaration, he wants Assad to go. The diplomat, anonymous because not the Permanent Representative authorized to speak on the record, said that made it a non-starter. We'll see. Watch this site.

No Confidence in Ban Ki-moon UN Staff Union Resolution Released After 5 Days, Ban in Davos Hadn't Seen

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, January 29 -- The UN Staff Union on January 24 passed a resolution of "no confidence" Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

Inner City Press exclusively covered the vote and meeting, in which Ban's response to Inner City Press at his press conference two days previous that those who oppose his proposals are "selfish."

On January 25, Inner City Press asked Ban's Associate Spokesman Farhan Haq for the Secretariat's response to the resolution, which criticizes Ban's spending on travel and UN Peacekeeping waste.

Haq replied that the Secretariat, and Ban, hadn't yet seen the resolution. Since then, Ban has been among other places in Davos, Switzerland.

Now five days later, the Staff Union leadership has released the resolution, here.

Some of the delay was occasioned by the Staff Union's leadership having proposed a weaker resolution. Here is the Staff Union president's gloss:

Dear all,

The resolution starts by saying " the staff..." at UNHQ, NY, etc...so it is quite clear who made the decision.

Even though I personally don't like the text and do not think the procedure of bringing a new text to the meeting and having it accepted is legal, the fact is that it happened, it is done, it is past. And even if we had kept our original draft, I am positive that the final result would have been the same, i.e., a vote of no confidence.

Staff members are very, very upset, with the SG, specially after he called us selfish. It was an insult on various levels which compounded other insults - budget cuts, non papers, downsizing. We have been receiving innumerous calls and e-mails requesting the resolution to be circulated and it already took us too long to do that.

Ramona, Fred and I discussed this until late last night. The resolution will be circulated this morning. Besides some language editing, the only change regards the SG travel section, since the proponents, despite many requests, never provided us with the source of the figure they quoted, and there was a decision during the meeting to couple the figure with reference to the source. So without one, we cannot have the other.

The meeting had a quorum and staff spoke. We will continue to do our job to the best of our ability.

Best, Barbara.

Watch this site.

As Ban Ki-moon's UN Ignores Press Murders in Sri Lanka, UNCA Stokes Hate Media There, Again

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, January 29 -- The position of freedom of the press and freedom of speech at the UN and its partners is declining daily. 

  Thousands of miles from UN headquarters in Sri Lanka, journalists rallied to protest the killing of reporters Lasantha, Sivaram, Nimalarajan and Sugeedarajan, and the disappearance of Prageeth.

   Inner City Press has repeated asked Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's spokespeople about these cases, particularly that of Prageeth, since Ban went to Sri Lanka in May 2009.

  But the UN has said little, and done less.

   Meanwhile Ban's Secretariat continues to "partner" with the UN Correspondents Association, which became known by some as the UN's Censorship Alliance after it sought to expel and dis-accredit Inner City Press for its reporting on UNCA's screening of a Sri Lanka government film denying war crimes.

 Click here for the story from the Sri Lanka Campaign, with among its leaders Edward Mortimer, the chief of communications of Ban's predecessor.

   UNCA "leaders" from Reuters (Louis Charbonneau),Agence France Presse (Tim Witcher) and Voice of America tried to get Inner City Press thrown out of the UN as a whole. 

   UN official Stephane Dujarric thanked VOA's Steve Redisch for his June 20, 2012 request to dis-accredit Inner City Press.

   Only because the attempt was exposed, including by use of the US Freedom of Information Act, was Inner City Press informed of the complaints and arguments against it. The UN provides no due process.

   Since UNCA is no longer in any position to defend the rights of journalists, a new organization has sprung up: the Free UN Coalition for Access. 

   It has petitioned the head of the UN Department of Public Information Peter Launsky-Tieffenthal to allow space for another organization, and his indications have not been unpositive.

  But Stephane Dujarric, in a January 17 meeting and since, has suggested that DPI wants to continue to work, exclusively it seems, with UNCA.

 But here is what UNCA has become: it continued Tuesday defacing and counterfeiting FUNCA flyers which raise substantive issues about journalists' rights at the UN, from due process to the nitty-gritty of non-resident correspondents' right to equal access to information including in the Delegates' Lounge.

   While FUNCA last week asked Peter Launsky-Tieffenthal and Dujarric to either open the glassed in "UNCA" bulletin board for posting by all or to permit a FUNCA board, no answer has been provided.  

   Launsky-Tieffenthal was asked about this, repeatedly, on Tuesday, after earlier it had been posed, not anonymously but without any response, in reply to Dujarric's post of a cartoon of the French President. 

  This can't be bad form: Dujarric tweeted-at Inner City Press in December, defending the UN and Security Council.  At least in those cases, no one was anonymous.

    Now UNCA "leaders" have created counterfeit social media accounts and used them to subcribe to or follow Permanent Missions to the UN and other journalists, hoping for reciprocity.

  Several UN journalists on Tuesday told Inner City Press this disgusts them. But the new president of UNCA, Pamela Falk, has done nothing as the organization had become even worse under her less than one month tenure.

  Falk was present at an exhibit opening about Libya on Tuesday night, chatting with UNCA's (censorship?) partners in DPI, at an event featuring among other Ban's Deputy Secretary General Jan Eliasson, who is supposedly studying the UN's inaction in Sri Lanka in 2009. 

  What is he doing -- including on press freedom and multiparty democracy issues?

   To come full circle, the UNCA "leaders" in their counterfeit social media account have raised, as was done in an UNCA Executive Committee meeting in 2012, fueling Sri Lanka hate media and death threats, the spurious issue of funding by the Tamil Tigers, which don't even exist anymore.

   It's false -- but that a supposed "journalists organization" would try to link competitors with such a group, and continue for now to be partnered with by Ban Ki-moon's UN, is telling. Watch this site.

Why Does UN Central Asia Office Exist If Not For Kyrgyz Uzbek Border Fight?

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, January 29 -- What does the UN Regional Center for Preventive Diplomacy for Central Asia do?

  For example, what has it done on the border fight between Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, complete with blockades of Barak and Sokh, helicopters, threats?

  UNRCCA was set up by the former chief of the UN Department of Political Affairs, Lynn Pascoe, mostly because Turkmenistan was willing to invite the UN in. 

  Once every six months Miroslav Jenca, Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General, comes and briefs the Security Council, and a press statement is issued.

   But the briefing are always closed. And Jenca does not do stakeouts to take press questions. 

   On Tuesday after the Security Council's president for January Masood Khan came out and read the most recent Council press statement, Inner City Press asked him about the border fight between Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan.

   Khan said things hadn't come up in that level of detail. Then what is UNRCCA working on? What accountability ever was there for the pogrom against ethnic Uzkeks in Kyrgyzstan? You never find out from Jenca. What is the point of the Office? 

  In an era when Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has ordered another $100 million in cuts, calling those who oppose him "selfish" and triggering a "No Confidence" Staff Union vote Inner City Press has put online here - what is the VALUE of the UNRCCA? Watch this site.

Amid Mali Pledges, UK Defense Minister Hammond "Misspoke," France Is Blamed, Doesn't Know

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, January 29 -- Amid a flurry of financial pledges in Addis Ababa for the Malian Army and the prospective AFISMA mission, outside the UN Security Council on Tuesday Inner City Press asked French Permanent Representative Gerard Araud how much France is pledging. He said they are pledging, but that he did not know how much.

  Moments later a Security Council diplomat told Inner City Press, "By intervening in Libya, France caused the Mali problem. Let them pay for it!" Anonymity was granted because the diplomat is not the Permanent Representative.

  Whatever the pledges made, it's worth remembering that Western countries on the Security Council decided not to pay for the Kenyan naval component of the African Union's AMISOM mission in Somalia, after its work in Kismayo. So will all of these pledges actually be paid.

  Meanwhile, amid bafflement at the statement by UK Defense Secretary Phil Hammond that Mali is a predominantly Christian country, Inner City Press asked the UK Mission to the UN if he said that.

  The UK Mission's new Head of Press and Public Affairs, Iona Thomas, "we spoke earlier about the UK Defence Secretary’s comments on religion in Mali earlier today. I can confirm that he misspoke." It's appreciated. Watch this site.

On Yemen Arms, Reuters Sources Them to Iran with Blind Quote, No NYT Disclosure

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, January 29 -- Did the weapons stopped en route to Yemen recently come from Iran? A US official, left unnamed by Reuters, says so. But on that basis?

    Unlike Reuters, the New York Times discloses that the "briefed" US officials "declined to provide details."

  But Reuters runs the blind quote, "This demonstrates the ever pernicious Iranian meddling." Demonstrates how?

   Similarly on the Democratic Republic of Congo on January 25 Reuters from the UN in New York ran a quote from a UN official they let be anonymous that "'It is not simply peacekeeping, this is peace enforcement. It's a much more robust stance,' said the official, who declined to be named."

 Inner City Press asked on January 26: why did Reuters accept this request for anonymity from a UN official on a concept -- "peace enforcement" -- that not all UN member states, particularly troop contributing countries, have agreed to? 

 And where's the accountability now? Reuters story on the promoted deal's failure at the AU summit in Addis Ababa didn't use or mention the January 25 blind quote, or even use the term peace "enforcement."

   Agence France Presse went further, or lower, allowing a "second UN official" to also go unnamed.

   But AFP then named the associate UN  spokesperson who announced the failure of the deal half an hour before it was to be signed. 

  What are AFP's policies for allowing anonymous declarations of war by the UN, which is ostensibly controlled by the member states who now say they were not consulted? 

  Again, what are Reuters' policies on granting anonymity in cases like this for Reuters editors like Stephen J. Adler,Walden Siew, and Paul Ingrassia, for Agence France Presse, for BBC?

 And a new question: which of these media's UN correspondent(s) has responded by start a counterfeit social media account calling the question raised above "outrageous" and trying to stop, on behalf of the UN Correspondents Association a/k/a UN's Censorship Alliance, the press to open up the UN by the new Free UN Coalition for Access? 

  After the UN failed in the Democratic Republic of Congo to protect civilians first in Goma then in Minova, where the DRC Army raped at least 126 women in late November 2012, a reserve spin war began.

  UN Peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous refused to answer Press questions about the Minova rapes, instead taking favored and compliant media out into the hall for a private briefing. Video here. These media included Reuters, Agence France-Presse and Voice of America.

  Now it's gotten worse. On January 25, 2013 AFP, Reutersand the BBC at the UN allowed an "unnamed UN official" to essentially declare war in the Congo. 

  Why grant anonymity? Is this a whistleblower? Or a failing UN official?

  In terms of the UN, isn't this "inter-governmental organization" owned and supposedly by its member states? Many of them, particularly troop contributing countries, have not agreed to Ladsous' "peace enforcement" push, nor in the C-34 committee on peacekeeping have they signed off on his proposal to use drones.

  But Ladsous, Inner City Press reported on January 25, ran a procurement for drones from November 28, 2012 to January 11, 2013, before he had any approval at all. 

Here's the inital video #LADSOUS2013, soft launched January 27.

  What right do high UN official have to declare war anonymously? And why do AFP, Reuters and the BBC serve as pass throughs in this way?

  Of note in this is the role of the decaying UN Correspondents Association. When Ladsous became the last minute replacement for Jerome Bonnafont as France's official to succeed their own Alain Le Roy atop UN Peacekeeping and Inner City Press reported it, AFP's Tim Witcher launched a process in UNCA to "take action"against Inner City Press. 

  He, the BBC reporter and Reuters are all on the Executive Committee on UNCA, two elected without any competition after their terms expired.

  Ultimately he and Louis Charbonneau of Reuterssupported Voice of America's June 20, 2012 request to the UN that Inner City Press accreditation be "reviewed." 

  This led the New York Civil Liberties Union to ask public questions about due process for independent journalists at the UN, questions that the UN has yet to answer.

  Then in December 2012 when Ladsous went so far as to have his spokesman seize the UNTV microphone so Inner City Press could not ask Ladsous a question about the now 126 rapes in Minova by the UN's partners in the Congolese Army, UNCA did nothing. Video here.

  UN official Stephane Dujarric claims he told Ladsous' spokesman not to do it again -- but never told anyone until a January 17 meeting when he and another UN official,Peter Launsky-Tieffenthal (we name officials) were Pressed by the new Free UN Coalition for Access on the UN's further decline in transparency.

  But now this UN machinery and its servile press allow a UN official to declare war anonymously. A new low has been reached. Could they go lower? Apparently yes. Watch this site.