By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, July 10 – Under the UN's relationship with the International Criminal Court, the UN limits itself to only “strictly necessary” contacts with indictees, outgoing UN Legal Counsel Patricia O'Brien said Tuesday. She claimed that Secretary General Ban Ki-moon takes this so seriously that he has called her for advice.
Why then did Ban take pictures with Sudan's Omar al Bashir, indicted for genocide and war crimes, and have his then-envoy Ibrahim Gambari attend the wedding of Bashir's daughter to Idriss Deby of Chad?
The UN said the photos with Bashir were not of a meeting. But now Ban's (or France's) chief of UN Peacekeeping, the fourth Frenchman in a row in the position Herve Ladsous, has met with Bashir. What was accomplished?
What we know is that Ladsous bragged about keeping a body of a dead assailant. The UN emphasized that Sudan now has the body, and that Inner City Press should ask only Sudan whether it will be buried, returned to relatively or ghoulishly “kept.”
When O'Brien spoke on Tuesday, it was on the record; Inner City Press was identified as the only media there, and the reasons the session was NOT under “Chatham House” rules, but rather on the record. Beyond what else Inner City Press has reported, for example on Haiti cholera, it emerged that the UN has major problems with the ICC summons to Kenya's elected leaders.
The UN has one of its headquarters in Nairobi. In this context, what would “strictly necessary” contacts be – discussing logistics? Grounds-keeping? Visas? Under Ladsous' rules, all would seem to qualify.
O'Brien who is now headed to Geneva to openly represent her country – contra Ladsous – said it is a good thing that the Kenyan duo, Kenyatta and Ruto, are only so far subject to a summons by the ICC and “are cooperating.” If that changed, it would be difficult for the UN in Nairobi, she said.
But not, it seems clear, under the Ladsous rules. Anything goes! Watch this site.
