UN Has Over 1000 Staff and 16 Agencies in Syria, Selective Alphabet Soup

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, August 31 -- Amid talk of missile strikes on Syria, the UN has bristled at questions about how many of its international staff are leaving the country.

Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's spokesperson Martin Nesirky said that even after the chemical weapons team left, more than a thousand UN staff remained. He did not distinguish between national and international staff -- a distinction the UN did make after the earthquake in Haiti.

Instead, after US President Barack Obama announced Saturday he will take his intention for military action on Syria to the US Congress, Nesirky's office put out a list of the alphabet soup of 16 UN agencies in Syria:

World Food Programme (WFP), United Nations Department of Safety and Security (UNDSS), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-HABITAT), Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), World Health Organization (WHO), United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), International Labour Organization (ILO), United Nations Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF), United Nations Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO), and Office of the Joint Special Representative (OJSR).

This list did not include the International Organization for Migration (IOM), though the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs did include IOM on its list of UN agencies, saying IOM is part of the "UN team."

OCHA also produced a list of international NGOs active in Syria, but then declined to answer Inner City Press' questions about threats by the rebel ISIS group made to NGOs in Jarabulus. So the UN speaks when it wants, for its own reasons. Watch this site.

   

On Syria, Obama Wants to Strike, Will Take It to Congress, UN Irrelevant?

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, August 31 -- Why did the UN hold a rare Saturday press conference on August 31? To try to make itself relevant on Syria. To summarize a meeting in an undisclosed location between Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and his High Representative on Disarmament Angela Kane. To say it cannot say when its report on chemical weapons will be completed.

That report is not supposed to, according to its mandate, say WHO used chemical weapons. When Inner City Press asked this week, Ban's associate spokesperson Farhan Haq said there would however be an "evidence based narrative." When Ban's lead spokesperson Martin Nesirky returned on August 30, Inner City Press asked him what the phrase meant. It will include interviews with witnesses and survivors.

On August 31, Gulf media told Nesirky Ban should "step up to the plate" and say who used the weapons. Nesirky pushed back; he also noted that a US State Department correspondent who quoted John Kerry on August 30 might again be watching TV, to see what Obama said.

When Obama belated started up, he said he has decided to use force, but to seek Congressional approval. He said he'll act without UN Security Council approval. And what of Sellstrom's report? Watch this site.

   

In Sri Lanka, Navi Pillay Notes Attacks on Witnesses and Media, But It's Dubious That UN Takes Seriously

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, August 31 -- As Navi Pillay wrapped up her visit to Sri Lanka today, she read out a prepared statement, three paragraphs we will focus on here. 

  She acknowledged what Inner City Press and other reported mid-way through her trip, "namely the harassment and intimidation of a number of human rights defenders, at least two priests, journalists, and many ordinary citizens... people in villages and settlements in the Mullaitivu area were visited by police or military officers [and were] subsequently questioned."

  This treatment is not limited to witnesses; it is often focused on journalists. 

  Pillay recounted that "more than 30 journalists are believed to have been killed since 2005, and several more – including the cartoonist Prageeth Ekneligoda - have disappeared. Many others have fled the country. Newspaper and TV offices have been vandalized or subjected to arson attacks – some, such as the Jaffna-based paper Uthayan, on multiple occasions.. I have called for the right to Information Act to be adopted like many of its neighbors in SAARC."

  The intimidation of the media and of complaining witnesses is major, and will undermine or call into question whatever oral and then written report Pillay issues about the trip. 

  After mentioning this intimidation, surveillance and harassment more than halfway through her statement, Pillay makes this claim: "the United Nations takes the issue of reprisals against people because they have talked to UN officials as an extremely serious matter."

  Not only is this often not true -- the UN cracks down on its own whistleblowers, and not only doesn't provide protection to those in it who are targeted, the UN as time assists in the targeting, ignoring the rights of free speech and free association.

  A UN system whistleblower who exposed UN corruption in North Korea was not only fired, false information about him was leaked by the UN to the New York Times. More recently the UN's Kosovo whistleblower James Wasserstrom, even when he litigated and won a judgment, was not even compensated for his costs, and Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has appealed.

  As regards Sri Lanka, when Inner City Press covered Ban's May 2009 trip to the island (which turned into a "victory tour" of the North), and published a quote from the chief of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs John Holmes from a clearly on the record session, Holmes response was to say "I will never talk to you again" and for his staff to file a complaint with UN media accreditation trying to get Inner City Press thrown out of the UN.

  This complaining to UN Media Accreditation was used in 2012 by the UN's Censorship Alliance, after Inner City Press reported on the background to UNCA's screening, in the UN, of the Rajapaksa government's film denying war crimes. (Click here for an outside report on that.)

  UNCA Executive Committee members from Voice of America, Reuters and AFP among others participated in the campaign; as since shown, Reuters UN bureau chief Louis Charbonneau handed the chief of UN Media AccreditationStephane Dujarric an anti-Press internal UNCA document,three minutes after promising not to do so. Story here, audio here, document here. Nothing has been done to address this.

  Rather, after Inner City Press quit UNCA and co-founded the new Free UN Coalition for Access, the UN Department of Public Information's response has been to again threaten to suspend or withdraw Inner City Press' accreditation, this time for merely hanging a FUNCA sign on the door of its shared office, while UNCA has five signs and continues functioning as the UN's Cowardice Association, putting other journalists at risk.

  When Pillay's office was contacted about this, their response was simply to note that accreditation was extended (albeit with inappropriate finger-waggling about, among other things, how to cover Ban and his UN Peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous.) So does the UN take these things seriously? Not on this evidence.

  Pillay is to report to the Human Rights Council in late September. Also, as first reported by Inner City Press, Ban is to have something to say about the Sri Lanka (UN) lessons learnt report that is finished but is so far being withheld. Watch this site.

   

Syria War Suck-Ups & Spies, Reuters Runs 26 Grafs for War, 2 Graf Response, After Attacking Smaller Press at UN

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, August 30 -- Amid the drum beat on Syria, Reuters hit a new low on Friday with 26 paragraphs from the UN channeling the US and Western view of bombing Syria, followed by a separate piece with two paragraphs of Syria's response. Call it the unfairness doctrine.

  Before quoting from the stories and naming their authors, it must be noted that Reuters' UN bureau has been shown to SPY for the UN, click here, and that Reuters executives when sent the documentation did nothing. Meanwhile they accept largely withheld evidence the US says it has, and allow unnamed "UN diplomats" to say the UN is too slow, the US should just bomb. Call it quid pro quo.

  On the 26 paragraph Reuters piece with unnamed pro-war spin, here, the author is Louis Charbonneau, shown to spy for the UN; among the reporting credits is one who assisted in this and worse.

  On the two paragraph "Syria responses" story, here, the lead credit is Mariam Karouny. Small media Inner City Press, which Reuters tried to get thrown out of the UN, interviewed Syria's Ambassador Bashar Ja'afari exclusively on Friday and ran a story, here, which can be supplemented.

   Earlier in the week much was made of the Syrian government's delay in granting the UN's request for its chemical weapons inspection team to visit al Ghouta.

Inner City Press asked UN spokesperson Farhan Haq at Tuesday's noon briefing when it was that the UN formally requested access to al Ghouta -- on Saturday, August 24 or before? Video here, from Minute 12. Video with captions, on Inner City Press YouTube channel, here and embedded below, with transcript.

Haq read out a press statement from August 22, in which Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said a request is being sent. Then, Haq said, Ban's High Representative on Disarmament Angela Kane "stepped forward with the request" -- on August 24, Saturday.

It was granted the next day.

Inner City Press asked again, was there any formal request by the UN other than Ban's press statement, before August 24? Haq called this "semantics." But when Inner City Press asked Ban's spokespeople to respond to widely circulated press releases about a request being made to Ban, the UN says the actual formal request had not been received yet, and so: no comment. Why should the UN say it must be different for Syria?

How could the UN be so sloppy? Or was it sloppy?

  While the delay to Sunday (or Monday, when the team got out and said, if this YouTube video on which Haq declined comment when Inner City Press asked is not false, that they are not even looking at what type of munition was used in part because they didn't want to put it in their white UN 4 by 4) is now an element in the case for missile strikes, the UN didn't formally ASK until Saturday, in the person of Angela Kane

   Inner City Press covered Kane when she was head of Ban's Department of Management, including an investigation by the UN Office of Internal Oversight Services for favoritism in the UN's so-called UMOJA computer management system.

  When Japan's Yukio Takasu returned after a pause from being his country's Ambassador to the UN to take over Kane's job, Kane's native Germany lobbied for her to get another top UN job. She was offered one in Lebanon, as Inner City Press reported, but did not want it. So she "got" Disarmament.

  This connection must be noted: it was Germany which got Kane this job, in the same way that France installed Herve Ladsous as the fourth French head of UN Peacekeeping in a row, and the US picked Jeffrey Feltman, formerly the State Department's chief on the Middle East to replace B. Lynn Pascoe as Ban's political chief.

  So the fact that Germany has expressed a willingness to join a coalition to strike Syria, without UN Security Council approval, and the Germany's Angela Kane's role in the "UN's" chemical weapons inspection team should be noted.

  But by most media covering the UN, it is not. When Inner City Press even mentions Ladsous' and UN Peacekeeping's French connection, Ladsous refuses to answer questions, and some media, including the French wire service Agence France Presse on one of whose management boards Ladsous served, have even filed complaints with the UN against Inner City Press. 

  This is dysfunction, and is now being countered by the Free UN Coalition for Access, @FUNCA_info.

  Another major wire service, Reuters, joined in the second of AFP's complaints. On August 26 Reuters based a piece essentially selling or planning for the legality of military strikes on Syria without Security Council or even General Assembly approval around, as lead, a comment by the Council on Foreign Relations' Richard Haass.

  But on that CFR call, as noted by Inner City Press, wasJudith Miller. Given her role during the lead up to the US intervention in Iraq, one might think this would have been included in an overly-long rehash story. But no. 

 Notably, Reuters' UN bureau has been shown to have spied for the UN, handing over an internal anti-Press document of the UN Correspondents Association (which under 2013 president Pamela Falk of CBS hosted Syrian rebel Jarba for what it called a "UN briefing") to UN official Stephane Dujarric. Story here, audio here, document here.

This beat just goes on. Watch this site.

   

On Syria, Is "UN Would Take 2 Weeks to Report on Chemical Weapons" Channeled by Insiders To Justify Faster US Action?

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, August 30 -- Would US President Barack Obama wait two weeks before taking military action on what his administration repeatedly on Friday called clear and convincing evidence that Syria's Assad government used chemical weapons on August 21?  It seems unlikely.

  And so what to make of the flurry of spoon-fed UN insiders all parroting the same line on Friday afternoon, that the UN report will take two weeks according to a "UN diplomat"? Or that UN team chief Ake Sellstrom wanted four weeks? These "reports" and echoes have the effect of validating the US taking action sooner, casting the UN as too slow.

As Inner City Press separately reported after speaking, on the record, with Syria's Permanent Representative to the UN Bashar Ja'afari, Damascus' position is that the US has made itself the secret judge of secret evidence. This has echoes of the FISA courts, and also the NSA spying scandal. But few link these.

No, the fix is in, the players are playing their parts.

    Earlier in the week, much was made of the Syrian government's delay in granting the UN's request for its chemical weapons inspection team to visit al Ghouta.

Inner City Press asked UN spokesperson Farhan Haq at Tuesday's noon briefing when it was that the UN formally requested access to al Ghouta -- on Saturday, August 24 or before? Video here, from Minute 12. Video with captions, on Inner City Press YouTube channel, here and embedded below, with transcript.

Haq read out a press statement from August 22, in which Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said a request is being sent. Then, Haq said, Ban's High Representative on Disarmament Angela Kane "stepped forward with the request" -- on August 24, Saturday.

It was granted the next day.

Inner City Press asked again, was there any formal request by the UN other than Ban's press statement, before August 24? Haq called this "semantics." But when Inner City Press asked Ban's spokespeople to respond to widely circulated press releases about a request being made to Ban, the UN says the actual formal request had not been received yet, and so: no comment. Why should the UN say it must be different for Syria?

How could the UN be so sloppy? Or was it sloppy?

  While the delay to Sunday (or Monday, when the team got out and said, if this YouTube video on which Haq declined comment when Inner City Press asked is not false, that they are not even looking at what type of munition was used in part because they didn't want to put it in their white UN 4 by 4) is now an element in the case for missile strikes, the UN didn't formally ASK until Saturday, in the person of Angela Kane

   Inner City Press covered Kane when she was head of Ban's Department of Management, including an investigation by the UN Office of Internal Oversight Services for favoritism in the UN's so-called UMOJA computer management system.

  When Japan's Yukio Takasu returned after a pause from being his country's Ambassador to the UN to take over Kane's job, Kane's native Germany lobbied for her to get another top UN job. She was offered one in Lebanon, as Inner City Press reported, but did not want it. So she "got" Disarmament.

  This connection must be noted: it was Germany which got Kane this job, in the same way that France installed Herve Ladsous as the fourth French head of UN Peacekeeping in a row, and the US picked Jeffrey Feltman, formerly the State Department's chief on the Middle East to replace B. Lynn Pascoe as Ban's political chief.

  So the fact that Germany has expressed a willingness to join a coalition to strike Syria, without UN Security Council approval, and the Germany's Angela Kane's role in the "UN's" chemical weapons inspection team should be noted.

  But by most media covering the UN, it is not. When Inner City Press even mentions Ladsous' and UN Peacekeeping's French connection, Ladsous refuses to answer questions, and some media, including the French wire service Agence France Presse on one of whose management boards Ladsous served, have even filed complaints with the UNagainst Inner City Press. 

  This is dysfunction, and is now being countered by the Free UN Coalition for Access, @FUNCA_info.

  Another major wire service, Reuters, joined in the second of AFP's complaints. On August 26 Reuters based a piece essentially selling or planning for the legality of military strikes on Syria without Security Council or even General Assembly approval around, as lead, a comment by the Council on Foreign Relations' Richard Haass.

  But on that CFR call, as noted by Inner City Press, was Judith Miller. Given her role during the lead up to the US intervention in Iraq, one might think this would have been included in an overly-long rehash story. But no. 

 Notably, Reuters' UN bureau has been shown to have spied for the UN, handing over an internal anti-Press document of the UN Correspondents Association (which under 2013 president Pamela Falk of CBS hosted Syrian rebel Jarba for what it called a "UN briefing") to UN official Stephane Dujarric. Story here, audio here, document here.

This beat just goes on. Watch this site.

After Kerry Speech, Syria Ambassador Tells Inner City Press, Who Made Him Judge of Secret Evidence?

By Matthew Russell Lee, Exclusive

UNITED NATIONS, August 30 -- Hours after US Secretary of State John Kerry cited the "verdict reached by our intelligence community about the chemical weapons attack the Assad regime inflicted," Inner City Press asked Syria's Permanent Representative to the UN Bashar Ja'afari what he thought of the US showing.

  Ja'afari exclusively told Inner City Press, "They are lying. They are cornered with the trap they extended themselves. They have no justification. If you have evidence, share it with team of investigation."

  At the day's UN briefing Inner City Press asked Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's spokesperson Martin Nesirky if Turkey or the US had shared the evidence they say they have with the UN. Nesirky repeated twice that the Secretary General encourages such sharing, which many take to mean no, the US did not share its evidence. Video here, from Minute 28:22.

  Ja'afari told Inner City Press, "'I have secret information' -- what do you mean? What is that? Who assigned you as the secret judge of secret information, with secret allies?"

  Some allies are not secret: France's Francois Hollande has said he could and would support a military action; Turkey has said the same. With many in the media beating the drums of war, they ask only when Obama will strike, not if. Meanwhile Ban Ki-moon is to meet his High Representative on Disarmament Angela Kane in New York on Saturday, before leaving town again on Tuesday. 

  Much is being made of the Syrian government's delay in granting the UN's request for its chemical weapons inspection team to visit al Ghouta.

Inner City Press asked UN spokesperson Farhan Haq at Tuesday's noon briefing when it was that the UN formally requested access to al Ghouta -- on Saturday, August 24 or before? Video here, from Minute 12. Video with captions, on Inner City Press YouTube channel, here and embedded below, with transcript.

Haq read out a press statement from August 22, in which Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said a request is being sent. Then, Haq said, Ban's High Representative on Disarmament Angela Kane "stepped forward with the request" -- on August 24, Saturday.

It was granted the next day.

Inner City Press asked again, was there any formal request by the UN other than Ban's press statement, before August 24? Haq called this "semantics." But when Inner City Press asked Ban's spokespeople to respond to widely circulated press releases about a request being made to Ban, the UN says the actual formal request had not been received yet, and so: no comment. Why should the UN say it must be different for Syria?

How could the UN be so sloppy? Or was it sloppy?

  While the delay to Sunday (or Monday, when the team got out and said, if this YouTube video on which Haq declined comment when Inner City Press asked is not false, that they are not even looking at what type of munition was used in part because they didn't want to put it in their white UN 4 by 4) is now an element in the case for missile strikes, the UN didn't formally ASK until Saturday, in the person of Angela Kane

   Inner City Press covered Kane when she was head of Ban's Department of Management, including an investigation by the UN Office of Internal Oversight Services for favoritism in the UN's so-called UMOJA computer management system.

  When Japan's Yukio Takasu returned after a pause from being his country's Ambassador to the UN to take over Kane's job, Kane's native Germany lobbied for her to get another top UN job. She was offered one in Lebanon, as Inner City Press reported, but did not want it. So she "got" Disarmament.

  This connection must be noted: it was Germany which got Kane this job, in the same way that France installed Herve Ladsous as the fourth French head of UN Peacekeeping in a row, and the US picked Jeffrey Feltman, formerly the State Department's chief on the Middle East to replace B. Lynn Pascoe as Ban's political chief.

  So the fact that Germany has expressed a willingness to join a coalition to strike Syria, without UN Security Council approval, and the Germany's Angela Kane's role in the "UN's" chemical weapons inspection team should be noted.

  But by most media covering the UN, it is not. When Inner City Press even mentions Ladsous' and UN Peacekeeping's French connection, Ladsous refuses to answer questions, and some media, including the French wire service Agence France Presse on one of whose management boards Ladsous served, have even filed complaints with the UNagainst Inner City Press. 

  This is dysfunction, and is now being countered by the Free UN Coalition for Access, @FUNCA_info.

  Another major wire service, Reuters, joined in the second of AFP's complaints. On August 26 Reuters based a piece essentially selling or planning for the legality of military strikes on Syria without Security Council or even General Assembly approval around, as lead, a comment by the Council on Foreign Relations' Richard Haass.

  But on that CFR call, as noted by Inner City Press, wasJudith Miller. Given her role during the lead up to the US intervention in Iraq, one might think this would have been included in an overly-long rehash story. But no. 

 Notably, Reuters' UN bureau has been shown to have spied for the UN, handing over an internal anti-Press document of the UN Correspondents Association (which under 2013 president Pamela Falk of CBS hosted Syrian rebel Jarba for what it called a "UN briefing") to UN official Stephane Dujarric. Story here, audio here, document here.

This beat just goes on. Watch this site.

   

From Syria, UN Tells Inner City Press That Translators Left and that Ban Ki-moon Respects Elected Ten of UNSC, & Asks for Evidence: Turkish Delight

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, August 30 -- On Syria, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's office put back Friday's "noon" briefing to 12:30, to report on Ban's meeting with the Permanent Five members of the Security Council. 

 But Ban's spokesperson Martin Nesirky read-out only only Ban's words, not for example those of US Ambassador Samantha Power, who declined questions on the way in and out.

  Inner City Press asked Nesirky what Ban thinks of countries like Turkey and the US which make public summaries of what they call evidence of Assad's guilt for what happened in Ghouta. Nesirky said Ban has encouraged countries to share their evidence with the UN. Video herefrom Minute 11:40.

  So Inner City Press asked if Turkey (or, say, the US) have in fact shared information with the UN. The fact Nesirky repeated that Ban encourages them to seems to imply they have not.

  Amid reports of some of the UN chemical weapons team already leaving Syria, Inner City Press asked if it is true some left for Lebanon.. Nesirky said yes, but only translators and interpreters. Apparently on the inspectors' final day, these are not necessary?

  Later Inner City Press asked about the phrase Ban's associate spokesperson Farhan Haq used in an answer to the Press this week: that the UN team will construct an "evidence based narrative." Does that mean, where the missiles came from?

  Nesirky said it means statements by witnesses and survivors. Okay - would this include those in the military hospital the team just visited? Nesirky would not say if those inside were soldiers, citing medical privacy. (We've reported that in the Eastern Congo the UN obtained medical records of victims of rapes committed by the UN's partners in the Congolese Army's 391 and 41 Battalions.) 

  But did these interviews respond to Syria's requests to inspect three new sites, Bahariya on August 22, Jobar on August 24 and Ashrafiyat Sahnaya on August 25?

After John Kerry delivered a slightly delayed statement including calling France the US' oldest ally, two Senior Administration Officials told the press that the US has the evidence, including from NGOs. 

  One official spoke of "geo spacial" evidence, then mentioned gas masks. The second official mused that Assad had wanted to knock out opposition around Damascus, to "invest" in a campaign on Aleppo.

  In the Q&A session, Reuters wanted to know why Obama hasn't made a decision to bomb Damascus yet.

  Reference was made to Obama speaking about Syria with three allies, who turned out to be the Baltics of Estonia, Lithuania & Latvia. At the UN one wondered that Obama, if only as a fluke of scheduling, could speak to countries like these while Ban spoke only to the Permanent Five.

  Back at the UN, Inner City Press asked why Ban had convened only the Permanent Five? Some elected non-permanent members of the Council have complained to Inner City Press they were left out, not even shown the UK draft resolution.

  Nesirky said Ban told the Presidency -- for now, Argentina - that he is willing to brief the full Council. Video here, from Minute 28:22.

 Still to some, proceeding this way unnecessarily magnifies the power of the Five.

Ban will leave New York again on Tuesday. Will he meet the elected Ten before then? Will the US bomb Syria before that? Watch this site.