At UN, Syria Ja'afari Asked of ICP's Feltman Scoop Calls It Escalation, Reuters UNexplained

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, May 29 -- Two months after Inner City Press broke the story that US official Jeffrey Feltman would come to head the UN Department of Political Affairs, on May 29 Inner City Press asked Syrian Ambassador Bashar Ja'afari for his comment. Video here, from Minute 25.

  While noting he has yet to receive "a letter from the Secretary General" confirming Feltman, Ja'afari said that for Feltman to head DPA "is a sign of escalation. This is not a sign of keeping things under the law, the international law."

   Ja'afari said the UN is not, or should not be, "about imposing national interests on the international community." He said the head of DPA should be "impartial, neutral" and he does not see Feltman that way. He is not alone.

When Inner City Press published its March 28 exclusive, it ran a quote that

"'This would strip from the UN its last scrap of credibility in the Middle East,' he said, adding that 'more shoes would be thrown at Ban Ki-moon.' He said, however, that Ban might be 'so out of touch' -- or so powerless or craven -- that he would rubber stamp the nomination of a Permanent Five member of the Security Council as he had France's ill-fated and 11th hour nomination of Herve Ladsous as the UN's top peacekeeper."

  What has happened since then? Well, Ladsous on May 29 responded by refusing to answer Inner City Press' questions about cholera in Haiti and about Sri Lanka, saying "Well, Mister, I will start answering your questions when you stop insulting me and making malicious and insulting insinuations." Video here, at Minute 28:10. What - that Bonnafont was Nicolas Sarkozy's person for UN Peacekeeping until this bragging led him to settle on Ladsous at the last minute?
 

   Reuters on May 21 stole without credit Inner City Press' March 28 exclusive about Feltman coming to the UN. Beyond not giving appropriate and legally required credit, the Reuters piece had no analysis of Feltman of the type widely heard, or hear-able, in the UN.

  Reuters bureau chief Louis Charbonneau said that more than a year ago he -- and, he noted, another Reuters reporter than at the UN with him -- stopped giving credit to any Inner City Press stories. He said credit is only a courtesy, not ever required. By contrast, Foreign Policy's "The Cable" did give credit, stating that it

"was first reported in March by the U.N. blog Inner City Press, and was reported again by Reuters Monday."

On May 22, the day after the uncredited theft by Reuters, Inner City Press asked Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's spokesman -- and former Reuters reporter -- Martin Nesirky:

Inner City Press: Martin, I wanted to first ask you this: back in March, Inner City Press reported that Jeffrey Feltman, Assistant Secretary-General for Near Eastern Affairs, would be replacing Mr. [B. Lynn] Pascoe. This now seems to be getting closer, and I understand, you guys don’t confirm that, but I wanted to ask you something that is a pretty pervasive thought or criticism of this -- what would the Secretary-General say to those who say this would put his and the UN’s policy in this important issue, area of the Middle East, seeming to be either a subset of or conflated with United States foreign policy in the same area? Would he have any response, is there anything to be said to that analysis?

Spokesperson Nesirky: The short answer is no, Matthew. If or when there are any appointments to be announced, we will make announcements, okay. I don’t have anything for you on this, okay. Yeah. Any other questions? Matthew, this is the last question. 

 

Inner City Press: One question in the whole noon briefing, I don’t understand.

  Perhaps now it's not so difficult to understand. Since then, Nesirky and now his Deputy have refused to answer whether the UN gives journalists the right to see complaints like Charbonneau's which are filed against them.

   Repeated inquiries with Reuters if this is an acceptable policy have gone unanswered, by "ethics" chief Greg McCune then Reuters CEO James C. Smith. Most recently Reuters editor in chief Stephen J. Adler has been asked. 

 

  Reuters, despite making most of its money from "high frequency trading" as one source puts it, should be expected to answer this question, and whether Reuters is behind Charbonneau's complaints against Inner City Press to the UN Media Accreditation and Liaison Unit and now the UN Correspondents Association, as the Rasputin of five big media against a smaller more independent one from which they take stories. 

 

  This witch hunt's next step is said to be the naming by June 1 of a "board of examination" to "investigate" Inner City Press -- the idea being that they can name this board without yet having disclosed the complaints, complainants or witnesses (who, of course, should not be on the Board of Examination). 

 

  Inner City Press has proposed three long time UN correspondents to the Board of Examination, if it goes forward, and the recusal of UNCA's President, who continues to demand that Inner City Press apologize for its Sri Lanka and seeming conflict of interest reporting. The article, at Pioli's request, was modified to specify that the payments were rent, now seven or eight years ago. 

 But the question cannot be censored, whether Pioli should have recused himself them from screening the Sri Lankan government's rebuttal to "Killing Fields," which was not shown in the UN due to an event for Ban Ki-moon. That Pioli should recuse himself now is clear, and the request has been formally made. Watch this site.

Holbrooke Scoops UN's Ban as de Mistura Brags, Nepotism by Proxy

By Matthew Russell Lee
www.innercitypress.com/un3monte010910.html

UNITED NATIONS, January 9 -- With the UN still desperately claiming no decision has been made to name Staffan de Mistura as its envoy to Kabul, de Mistura bragged to the U.S.' Richard Holbrooke that the job is his. Holbrooke in turn told Foreign Policy's nimble Cable, which published it late Friday, to the Web and yes, to Inner City Press, which earlier in the week had predicted de Mistura and asked Ban Ki-moon about it.

This UN is the gang that can't shoot straight. By Saturday, Ban's spokesman Martin Nesirky was insisting to AFP's Washington bureau that no decision had been made, that Ban was the only one who could make it. But the moment for him to have done so was, at latest, on January 6, when he briefed the Security Council on Afghanistan.

Afterwards Ban read notes to the Press and took some questions. Inner City Press asked about the New York Times' editorial, which plugged Jean Marie Guehenno over de Mistura, who it called a low key bureaucrat. The choice is "my prerogative," Ban told Inner City Press, not for the NYT to make. This telegraphed the choice. But still Ban let his choice and Richard Holbrooke scoop him.

Why would de Mistura brag? Perhaps to nail it down, and not wait until the January 28 conference in London. Anything could happen, between now and then.

Inner City Press and the Washington Post (and Friday's Foreign Policy, which Ban and the South Korean press have previously been quick to point out is owned by the Washington Post) have already noted that de Mistura's stock rose with Ban when he hired Ban's son in law Siddarth Chatterjee as his chief of staff while serving in Iraq.

(This pattern of nepotism by proxy, or by Chatterjee, has continued in Copenhagen, where Jan Mattsson of UNOPS in turn hired Chatterjee, for a D-1 post in the process of being upgraded to D-2, another leap).

But de Mistura whole rise has been fueled by "suck-up hires," as one long time observer put it. Under Kofi Annan, de Mistura hired the son of Annan's chief of staff Iqbal Riza. Since as Ban's Congo envoy Alan Doss knew and worked around, parent and child can't both work for the UN, Riza's son got his paychecks through another name. But the effect was the name: rise by hiring the close relatives of Turtle Bay's powerful.

Just as Hamid Karzai previously vetoed Paddy Ashdown, Inner City Press is told he'd like to veto de Mistura, probably even more so now that Holbrooke has endorsed him. But he'll likely lack the leverage to do so at the January 28 conference. So what can happen, between now and then? Watch this site.

Footnote: late Friday in the UN's new three story building on its East River fronting Norht Lawn, Inner City Press informed three well placed officials about Holbrooke's use of The Cable. One who said Holbrooke was behind the NYT editorial shook his head and called it deft and even devious, while asking, "What has Holbrooke accomplished, in either Af or Pak?"

Another said the puppet master behind the NYT editorial wasn't Holbrooke but rather the U.S.' Permanent Representative to the UN. (She was in DC Friday, among other things meeting with Hilary Clinton.) The third mused that Guehenno, something of a dandy and man about town, might have met the retired NYT editorial writer Unger at some expensive restaurant. The rest, as they say, is history.

And see, www.innercitypress.com/un3monte010910.html