On Syria, Obama Speech Cites YouTube, Leaves UN to the End, No Ban Ki-moon, Race for Relevance

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, September 10 -- President Barack Obama's prime time speech on Syria was short, and only near the end did he even mention the UN Security Council and the UN. 

  The gambit to have Syria identify chemical weapons, sign a treaty and invite the UN in through the march toward missile strikes into disarray. Obama said he'd asked for delay in Congress -- when things had been looking bleak for him there, especially in the House of Representatives.

  Obama's speech was mostly summary, hung on references to YouTube videos and a letter from an unnamed interlocutor, that whoever comes after Assad might violate human rights. 

 Might eat lungs, you say? This wasn't heard in Obama's speech.

  Obama mentioned Russia, then France and the UK. (China never showed up.) Then at Minute 13 Obama spoke of a resolution in the UN Security Council, and of UN involvement. The name of Ban Ki-moon, or even the words "Secretary General," did not come up. 

There was no mention at all of the UN report. But nor did Obama repeat the "UN is hocus pocus" line he used after the G-20.

  Just after Obama finished, two US networks were showing singing and dancing shows. On ABC they noted that Obama's speech had not been shown live in Syria. (Of course, it was 4 am there.)

  From a UN perspective, all of the manipulative effort to get Ban Ki-moon on television -- canceling noon briefings for Ban to take a mere two or five pre-selected questions, refusing as on Tuesday to take any but Syria questions, even amid questions about the UN's Intervention Brigade in the Eastern Congo and a seeming cover-up of attacks on the press in South Sudan. and Liberia (click here for short pitchof the Free UN Coalition for Access @FUNCA_info, on press freedom.)

  Ban's UN is all in, but not to Obama. The UN's Race for Relevance continues. Watch this site.

   

At UN's G-192, France's G-20 Called Untransparent Amid Dictator Flights, Cassez Charges, No Non-French Press

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, February 16, updated twice -- As France tries at the UN to pitch the upcoming G-20, there is more than a little grumbling, met by a lack of transparency.

Amid news of French ministers accepting vacations and transportation from dictators and their associates, French diplomats descend on the UN General Assembly and its president seeking, they say, the “legitimacy of the G-192” and of democracy.

Last week in the UN's North Lawn building, France's Permanent Representative Gerard Araud emerged from meeting with GA President Joseph Deiss of Switzerland, only to make snarky jokes to a Swiss diplomat sitting in the relocated Vienna cafe.

Araud not having had a Press availability in months, Inner City Press sent questions about the meeting to the spokesman for PGA Deiss, as well as to the French Mission to the UN's spokesmen.

PGA spokesman Jean Victor Nkolo replied that “The topic PGA Deiss discussed with the Permanent Representative of France to the UN was global governance and the French presidency of the G20, in the context of the coming informal plenary of the GA with French Minister Le Maire.”

The French Mission replied curtly that “As for the meeting with PGA Deiss, Ambassador Araud and him discussed global governance reform in the framework of the French presidency of the G20.”

In fact, the Swiss have complained about France not inviting them to the G-20, while inviting among other non-members Ethiopia and Equatorial Guinea -- some jokes, could a junket in Malabo be far behind?

PGA Deiss -- whose housing in New York is paid for by the Swiss government -- has complained about the illegitimacy of the G-20. But he by far the only one, and French Minister Le Maire's pitch on February 17, believed to focus on the rising prices of agricultural commodities, seems unlikely to give the legitimacy Nicolas Sarkozy says he wants. (Click here for a previous Inner City Press report on a Sarkozy visit to the UN, complete with press conference limited to reporters with French passports.)

While dismissed as unrelated to the G-20, Sarkozy and his ministers including Chrisine Lagarde are loudly beating the drum for Florence Cassez, convicted of kidnapping in Mexico. (Ms. Lagarde says she will bring up l'affaire Cassez at the upcoming meeting of G-20 finance ministers). France derides the Mexican legal system and ask that Ms. Cassez be sent back to Paris to serve out her sentence.

But what ever happened to the those returned from Chad to France from L'Arche de Zoe, also accused of kidnapping? The French Mission does not make it easy to get answers, even for Francophone non-French.

Why did France abstain from the Security Council's Iraq resolution -- most say “BNP” -- and what will happen next? What is France's thinking of deferring the International Criminal Court's prosecution of Sudan's Omar al Bashir?

And, as relates to “its” G-20, how will France pass the G-20 torch to Mexico 2012, while so deriding its legal system? Watch this site.

Update of 6:10 pm -- the French Mission has responded that while the l'Arche de Zoe staff were returned to France in December 2007, their sentences of hard labor being converted to imprisonment, on March 2008 Idriss Deby of Chad granted pardons and they were released.

Inner City Press asked, and asks, where are they now? But answers are appreciated - including by Mr. Le Maire about the G-20. Watch this site.

Update 2 - it is explained that Equatorial Guinea was invited as head of the AU, and Ethiopia for its role in NEPAD.

On IMF Quota Changes, Spin War Emerges, IMF Role in Debt of Sudan Questioned

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, November 18 -- After the International Monetary Fund's board agreed on November 5 to move six percent of powers to developing countries, the IMF says that “most commentary was positive.”

But when Inner City Press asked UN Assistant Secretary-General for Economic Affairs Jomo Kwame Sundaram about it on November 16, he said that two thirds of the six percent comes from “other developing countries,” and that the quota system should be further reformed. Video here, from Minute 21:30.

At the IMF's biweekly briefing on November 18, Inner City Press asked IMF spokesperson Caroline Atkinson about this criticism. She said she wasn't aware of it (since “most commentary was positive”) and argued that 80% came from “advanced economies” and the rest from “a small number of oil producing” countries which she said are technically classified as developing.

Ms. Atkinson then said that of the 187 members, 110 countries saw their quotas increase, 102 of them emerging and dynamic countries -- another euphemism for developing?

These two very different views of the changes turn on how one defines developing. While the UN often mis-classifies these, to rely entirely on the IMF to assess the seriousness of IMF reforms also seems unwise.

Inner City Press also submitted two country specific question, the first of which on Sudan Ms. Atkinson read out and acknowledged, promising a later answer:

On Sudan, both Hillary Clinton and the UK's William Hague on Nov 16 said they are in talks about reducing the national debt as an incentive for the Southern Sudan secession referendum scheduled for January 9. Is the IMF involved in any such talks? Can the IMF play any role in reducing Sudan's debt? [We will publish the IMF's answer - watch this site.]

On Democratic Republic of Congo, what is the IMF's reaction to the shortfall in Paris Club debt reduction (“82.4 percent reduction of Congo's debt stock, short of the 90 percent target”) and to the pace of reforms in the DRC?

Watch this site.

UN G-20 Team Cuts Out UNDP & Jomo, Ban 2d Term in View, DC House Looming

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, November 9 -- As UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon arrived in South Korean for the G-20 meeting, UN sources in New York complained to Inner City Press about an “unprecedented level of micro-management” by Ban's office in the run up to the G-20.

South Korea having this G-20 is a laurel in the country's crown, as is Ban's position in the UN. But Ban wants to use this G-20 meeting, if possible, to get endorsements for a second term as Secretary General, publicly or privately. So nothing can go wrong.

For that reason, the sources tell Inner City Press, unlike before other G-20 meetings when a range of UN system officials have been involved, this time Ban's closest advisers seized control of preparations.

Excluded or elbowed out among others the sources tell Inner City Press were Norwegian Olav Kjorven, assistant secretary-general and director of policy at UNDP and Malaysia Jomo Kwame Sundaram, the assistant secretary general of DESA under Sha Zukang, the Under Secretary General who wined and dined with and gave an award to the Tiananmen Square general during Ban's recent trip to Shanghai.

This of course is bad form. But Ban is under pressure, especially after the controversy surrounding his craven suck-up to China during his four day visit, not once publicly mentioning the name of this year's Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo.

Even the generally liberal and pro-UN New York Times ran an editorial questioning whether Ban should be supported for a second term.

Now, after the November 2 election, Ban and his advisers know they face a buzz saw in the Republican controlled House Foreign Relations committee, probably under UN knowledgeable Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, who may look into issues ranging from UN inaction in Darfur to Myanmar as well as UNRWA. Their tour guide to Washington Robert Orr, reportedly the crafter of the “US is a deadbeat” line, may lose his way in the new Committee. Will they hire a lobbyist? Watch this site.

At UN, Korean Themes of Seoul G-20 & Ban 2d Term, DPRK Human Rights Meeting: Transcripts

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, October 22 -- The theme at the UN on Friday was Korea, Korea, both North and the South.

Alongside a festival of Korean food in the soon to close Delegates' Dining Room -- the shinsunro spicy seafood soup was particularly good -- and a UN Day concert by a Korean symphony, South Korean UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon addressed a closed meeting of member states about the upcoming G-20 meeting in Seoul.

Sources tell Inner City Press that statements of support for a second term for Ban are being solicited to be unveiled in Seoul at the G-20, as they were not at the General Debate last month in New York.

Across the hallway of the UN's North Lawn Building in Conference Room 1, North Korea was the topic of a Third Committee of the GA, on human rights. Numerous western speakers urged North Korea, formally the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, to allow a visit by the Special Rapporteur on human rights in that country, Marzuki Darusman.

Darusman, who is simultaneously the chairman of Ban Ki-moon's strangely silent advisory panel on accountability for war crimes in Sri Lanka, recounted how he has tried to get permission to visit the country.

At the end, North Korea's Deputy Permanent Representative asked for the “right to reply.” The Committee's chairman, the Permanent Representative of Cameroon, said this was an interactive session with no right to reply. A statement, then, the North Korean said.

Transcripts, by Friends on Inner City Press, are at www.innercitypress.com/un1korea102210.html

He said his country had in the past allowed “Amnesty International, NGO's and the European Union” to visit the DPRK. But, he said, as soon as his country dropped out of the NPT nuclear non proliferation treaty, a resolution on human rights was introduced. We cannot accept it, he said.

The North Korean took particularly exception to Japan, bringing up “forced conscriptions” in World War II and what he called broken promises.

On the issue of abductions of Japanese citizens, he said, a nationwide search had been conducted.

Japan asked for the floor and said that only five of 17 had been returned, and there might be more. This seemed a strangely narrow response to what North Korea said, that the whole human rights focus on North Korea was just “political.”

The Cameroonian chair ended the session with what he said were African proverbs, about a star lighting up the darkest night. (There is also the proverb about the UN translators stopping work at 6 pm).

Across the hall, the closed door meeting with Ban Ki-moon continued. Why was it closed? Swiss sources tell Inner City Press that the Swiss office of President of the GA Joseph Deiss said it was the G-20 which asked to close the meeting to the Press.

On Ban's way out, he and his chief of staff chatted amiably with Sri Lanka's Ambassador Palitha Kohona. The North Korean DPR was nowhere to be seen. But the Korean symphony was about to play.