By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, July 3 -- When UN Deputy Secretary General Jan Eliasson returned from Afghanistan after a long flight, he told the Press he went home ready to sleep and found his bedroom locked. The housekeeper, you see, had someone locked the door.
At a UN press conference not long afterward, Inner City Press asked Eliasson if he had raised in his meeting with President Hamid Karzai, the issue of Karzai appointing to the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission a warlord ally and a former Taliban minister, Mawlawi Abdul Rahman Hotak.
Yes, Eliasson said, it had come up, with the president, the foreign minister and the "chair, a very impressive personality." Apparently he told Karzai to live up to Afghanistan's "very good" constitution. But he also said it is "very much" an internal Afghan matter.
Eliasson is more knowledgeable about UN-world, and UN principles, than most atop the Secretariat right now. He's been President of the General Assembly, and envoy to Darfur. Wednesday he let it be known he's leading UN groups on Syria, Mali and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
On the DRC, we hope he's read the new Group of Experts report the full text of which Inner City Press exclusively put online, with an eye to making UN Peacekeeping live up to its claimed human rights due diligence policy.
But the questions Wednesday weren't limited to Afghanistan. Voice of America's new corresponsal at the UN asked about Egypt, and Eliasson had a statement ready.
It felt like a set-up, and one wondered and the Free UN Coalition for Access asked why the Spokesperson wouldn't make any non-Eliasson questions on this slow Wednesday with no Security Council or GA meetings: no explanation.
Two UNCA executive committee members including 2013 president Pamela Falk of CBS asked Eliasson about Pakistan, which he had not visited; because Eliasson had by contrast publicly said he was working on Sri Lanka, Inner City Press asked him about that, for a separate forthcoming story.
When the deputy spokesperson called the session to an end, after giving a single (UNCA executive committee) journalist a second round of questions, Inner City Press went up and asked Eliasson if during his trip anything had come up about Louis Maxwell, the UN security official killed, most likely by the Afghan national forces, defending other UN staff.
Eliasson said he would look into it. And, contrary to many recent experience with the UN including a threat to suspend or withdraw Inner City Press' accreditation for merely posting a sign of the Free UN Coalition for Access on its office door, while UNCA has two signs, we believe him. Watch this site.
