As Gabon Pitches Ping for AU & Denies French Funding, Canapes Served

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, January 17 -- As the race for the top African Union post heats up, Gabonese Ambassador Nelson Messone held an event Monday night at the Millennium Hotel across from the UN, to promote a second term for Gabon's Jean Ping.

The event featured, among others, the Permanent Representatives to the UN of Equatorial Guinea and Cameroon, as well as shrimp and guacamole canapes. Video here.

Only four questions were asked, and Inner City Press asked three of them: whether the Ambassadors in attendance are in support of Ping, whether Gabon believes the post is reserved for a smaller state than South Africa, and whether Gabon's differences with South Africa around Eritrea sanctions in late 2011 were in any way related to the race.

On the question of support, Messone said "it's obvious," Ping is "from the Central African region." Tommo Monthe, Cameroon's Ambassador, told Inner City Press his presence means "strong support" for Ping. Equatorial Guinea's Ambassador exchanged a letter with Messone.

On the other questions, Messone diplomatically said that "the wisdom of African heads of state always prevails" and he sees now reasons why it won't this time, "whether there are one, two or three candidates." He decried rumors that "one country outside of Africa" was funding Ping's race, saying that only Gabon is funding it.

Afterward, Messone declined to confirm that the "one country" he referred to is France, but said that the only rule is that countries outside of Africa can't fund the race. But, one wag wondered, can they directly or indirectly condition support for their former colonies in Africa to support their preferred candidate? Watch this site.

Footnote: after Messone finished, Inner City Press was approached by one hapless European diplomat, who said he'd come based on the mention in the invitation of a review of Gabon's two years on the Security Council. "But that's not what he talked about," the diplomat complained. And so it goes.

At End of Gabon's Month, Grumbles Over Libya, South Sudan Predictions, Germany on Tap

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, June 29 -- Gabon's month as president of the UN Security Council was supposed to end on June 28, with a reception in a ballroom 17 stories above Third Avenue.

But at least three agenda items slipped past the reception, including a resolution on the UN Disengagement Observer Force that was still being negotiated, as to how events in Syria should be reflected, as the party happened.

Gabon's Permanent Representative Nelson Messone greeted his Security Council colleagues in front two screens showing scenes from Libreville and the countrywide, big logs being driven on trucks, mangroves growing into rivers, even an old black and white drawing of Albert Schweitzer.

Alongside the Arab Spring turned Summer, the final flurry of Gabon's presidency centered around the resolution, unforeseen at the beginning of the month, authorizing Ethiopian troops into Sudan's Abyei region for six months.

One wag joked that UNDOF, too, began as a temporary disengagement mission -- and is still there.

The week of negotiations on the Abyei force was used to explain the delay into Germany's month as president in July -- perhaps as late as July 8 -- of the resolution needed for a new mission in South Sudan.

India's Hardeep Singh Puri, who earlier in the day had told a UN session about global governance that a “member of the Secretariat” in Monday's meetings on Libya had told the Council that Gaddafi has killed more civilians than NATO, explained to Inner City Press that this comment, made in closed door consultations, was an admission by the UN that the NATO campaign which was meant to protect civilians was having the opposite effect.

Across the room Susan Rice of the US, after a long talk with Messone, spoke with the Press. Asked about the moribund Presidential Statement introduced about the visit of African Union ministers in mid-June, she said among other things that the PRST did not advance things. The visit happened, though.Shouldn't it at least be memorialized by the Council, like a June 28 briefing about Guinea Bissau was?

At the end of the Guinea Bissau session, Messone emerged to read a press statement at the stakeout. While he declined, there, to answer Inner City Press' question about accountability for the 2009 assassinations in that country, without the month's work even completed Messone had done six televised stakeouts.

This was double what French Ambassador Gerard Araud did in May, when France was President. Araud had been spotted on June 27 back in the UN's North Lawn building, imperiously leading a delegation into the UN peacekeeping budget endgame negotiations, also still ongoing.

Earlier that day the UN had belated confirmed that Inner City Press had reported two weeks earlier: that top UN Peacekeeper Alain Le Roy will leave.

At Tuesday night's reception, some agreed and some did not with the Press' two week old prediction that Eric Chevalier, also of France, will replace Le Roy. There was a consensus, however, that it will be a Frenchman. That is how the UN works, or doesn't. Watch this site.