Annan's Spokesman and Author Fred Eckhard Says Oil for Food Was Overplayed, Is Asked of UN Decay, But Off Record

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, April 26 -- There was an air of nostalgia Friday at the UN, as Kofi Annan's former spokesman Fred Eckhart signed copies of his book, “A Spokesperson's Memoir,” gave a short speech and then answered some questions.

  Those in the audience were fans, of Annan and Eckhard; some are less positive about the current UN administration. The mood was wistful, almost.

  It is difficult to fully describe the scene, as Eckhard began by saying that while his opening statement was on the record, he wanted what followed -- that is, his answers -- to be “off the record, even for blogs.” Duly noted.

  In his prepared remarks, Eckhard said that those of the “right wing” misused or mis-portrayed the Oil for Food scandal. He said the book was born in the UN cafeteria (now only open to 4 pm, unlike in Eckhard's day), when along with Annan's chief of communications Edward Mortimer he decided a list of Annan's accomplishments should be prepared.

  Eckhard made the list, then made it into a book. Objectively, it has been humbly slow to market. James Traub wrote a quick book, joined last year by Annan's own memoir. And now Eckhard's. (We're adding this link to the book on Amazon.com).

(By contrast, so far in English Annan's successor Ban Ki-moon's book is a series of breezy Conversations with Tom Plate, click here for atmospherics of belated Princeton Club launch -- which was, however, all on the record).

  From public sources, most of them UN-related, it can be reported that Eckhard is helping girls in Burkina Faso and that he taught in China -- intriguingly, a course on the role of the Spokesperson. (Mortimer, meanwhile, works on issues like Sri Lanka. These were and remain true believers, we say not without nostalgia and respect.)

Eckhard & Stephane Dujarric, action on USG (Ladsous) not shown

  While Eckhard's answers must sadly go unreported, these were Inner City Press' interests:

  What about the Secretary General's Spokesperson's Office getting thrown out of the Security Council, where it used to be allowed a seat in closed door consultations?

  As Inner City Press reported at the time, Ban Ki-moon's then chief of staff Vijay Nambiar pushed back, very gently, and the ouster was complete.

  And what would a UN Spokesperson of Eckhard's time have done if a UN Under Secretary General started saying openly that he would not answer any questions from a particular media or reporter? Is that good for the UN and for this the US is supposed to serve?

  One can imagine Eckhard's answer. But for now, we'll have to leave this to the imagination: work on these issues will continue. Watch this site.

Claimed UN Reforms are Sagging, High Flying Ban Oversees Raids on Press, Lawless

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, April 12 -- What is UN reform? For some it revolves primarily around air travel costs, with the intern in business class a sort of modern day welfare queen in a limousine.

  But in terms of accountability, when the UN Staff Union voted “no confidence” in Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, and Inner City Press asked repeatedly how much Ban spends on travel for himself and his entourage, no answer has been given.

  Doesn't transparency start at the top? 

  Similarly, while it was in the context of his “mobility” plan that Ban Ki-moon answered Inner City Press that his opponents in the UN Staff Union in New York were “selfish,” many point to Ban's closest adviser who merely move laterally, not out to the field.

  Shouldn't mobility begin at the top? It happened for Fink Haysom. It is happening for Michael Myer. Why not, say, Bob Orr?

  Oh we forgot, Ban's scribe Tom Plate, in belatedly launching his book “Conversations with Ban Ki-moon” at the Princeton Club, called Orr invaluable. All the more reason to share him with the world!

  There are claims of increased whisteblower protections. But just this week, James Wasserstrom decried the Sisyphusian processing of his retaliation claim.

  The focus on air travel mentioned above we attribute to US Ambassador for Management and Reform Joe Torsella. We have to say, we saw him in the North Lawn working it on the report of the Senior Advisory Group on Peacekeeping Operations.

  Friday as the General Assembly adopted the other reports of the Fifth (Budget) Committee, but not SAG, a well placed African ambassador told Inner City Press that Torsella, Miguel Berger of Germany as Fifth Committee chair, and the Permanent Representative of Fiji representing the Group of 77 had been charged with “cooking” a final SAG proposal.

  Apparently the dish was not ready: by close of business Friday it had not been adopted.

  So, is the UN being reformed? We think not. Down in the world of press relations, the new Free UN Coalition for Access has submitted twelve simple reforms to the top of the Department of Public Information. 

  Not a one has been implemented; there is not even a process. There are still no rules of due process for journalists.

  Hitting a new low, DPI conducted a raid on Inner City Press' office on March 18, and when the Spokesperson was asked by BuzzFeed about the raid, the photographs including of Inner City Press' desk and bookshelf were immediately leaked to BuzzFeed through an anonymous “Concerned UN Reporter” e-mail account.

  Reform? We think not. But there are people trying. Watch this site.

UN's Lack of Reform Extends Down to Ban's Schedule, Banning of Press, DPI's Lack of Rules

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, March 13 -- The UN apparently cannot reform itself, in matters either large or small.

   For three large issues, consider only the UN's claim of impunity for bringing cholera to Haiti, inaction as 40,000 civilians were killed in Sri Lanka, and inaction on 126 rapes in Minova by its continuing partners in the Congolese Army.

  But consider too a small issue, one that the UN on January 17 told the new Free UN Coalition for Access it would reform, but hasn't.

  FUNCA was launched in late 2012, once it became clear that the old UN Correspondents Association not only was not pushing for more access for journalists (other than the few big media which control it) but was actively seeking to get the investigative Press thrown out of the UN. That continues.

   After some advocacy, FUNCA was invited to meet top officials of the Department of Public Information on January 17.

  FUNCA, represented at the meeting by a major non-Western wire service, a long time photographer and Inner City Press, laid down markers for further reforms like due process rules for journalists, but came out of the meeting with some already committed.

   It was said for example that the events in New York City beyond the UN of Secretary General Ban Ki-moon would henceforth be listed in the UN Media Alert, and that photo opportunities would be open for all.

   But Ban's New York City events are not appearing in the Media Alert. On March 12, as simply the most recent example, Ban appeared at the Princeton Club on 43rd Street for the launch of a book by Tom Plate, “Conversations with Ban Ki-moon.”

   The event was not listed in the Media Alert, nor in Ban's schedule. An attempt was made, after Inner City Press' RSVP had been accepted, to nevertheless ban it. (After complaint, this was reversed; see Inner City Press' March 12 piece on the event, here.)

  Since the January 17 “commitment,” what has been done to make Ban's NYC events more accessible? Nothing, it appears.

  Rather, the focus of DPI's Stephane Dujarric, to whom despite his role in accepting the June 20, 2012 Voice of America / UNCA request to review the accreditation of Inner City Press and thanking VOA for it has been left in charge of reform, seems to be to work around and undermine FUNCA.

   On February 27, after FUNCA was invited to a February 22 meeting by DPI at which UNCA president Pamela Falk of CBS screamed that Inner City Press is “like a mugger” and shouted, “you call yourself a journalist,” Dujarric sent a letter not to admonish not Falk but Inner City Press, for reporting on the meeting.

Inner City Press and another FUNCA member immediately reminded Dujarric that Inner City Press had said loudly, “you are on the record,” and Falk said, “He's going to write this up.” But Dujarric has not explained or retracted his false complaint.

   Rather, another false complaint has been filed, by UNCA Executive Committee member Tim Witcher of AFP and theReuters correspondent, about a March 8 entirely verbal disagreement significantly less heated that was UNCA's Falk screamed on February 22.

  Inner City Press has asked for a copy of the complaint, and for the applicable due process rules, which the NYCLU asked Dujarric for on July 5, 2012. Neither has been provided.

  (In fairness, one requested reform that has been semi implemented is a new non-UNCA bulletin board, on which FUNCA for now has four flyers. Perhaps the AFP / Reuters complaint can be posted there?)

 With Dujarric now relying on complaint(s) to justify not addressing the reforms requested, and in cases even committed to, FUNCA, when issues about photographs being blocked and deleted were raised, he called the photograph who co-founded FUNCA and asked him to not publicize his complaints.

   But the only action taken has been to talk to the UN's cafeteria and “tent” contractor Aramark, not to announce anything to the wider private security pool, much less to address the forced deletion of photographs that has been raised.

  The UN cannot or will not reform itself. But we will continue to Press. Watch this site.

As Ban Ki-moon Launches Book with Tom Plate, Kim Sook's Missile Joke, Sri Lanka in the Princeton Club: How the UN Works

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, March 12 -- The UN's story should be better told. That was the stated goal when the idea for Tom Plate's “Conversations with Ban Ki-moon” was born, in 2010, at Singapore's Mission to the UN.

   Plate had profiled Lee Kuan Yew as his first “Giant of Asia” and let it be known that he saw Ban as a future Giant in his series.

   Fifteen hours of interviewing later, a smallish 236-page book was belatedly launched Tuesday night at the Princeton Club in Manhattan. 

  The crowd included some press, some students from Loyola Marymount where Plate has taught for the last three years, and Permanent Representatives from the UK, Sri Lanka, New Zealand, Kazakhstan and South Korea. 

  Ambassador Kim Sook, saying he's known Ban for thirty years, joked that he prefers book launches to missile launches. The word armistice, however, was not used.

  Ban said when he read the first draft of the book, it seemed to him too light hearted, like EZ-Listening music. But, he said, it might work in letting people know how the UN works.

  And how does the UN work? Earlier on Tuesday, Ban met for more than two hours with the Group of 77, mostly about “post-2015 development” but also his delayed plan for mobility, which has been opposed by staff, at least in New York. 

  Ban used the word “selfish” in referring to some of this opposition; this was followed by a Staff Union vote of No Confidence. This was not mentioned Tuesday night. But Ban's Under Secretary General for Management, Yukio Takasu of Japan, was in attendance.

   How does the UN work? Also present was the Ambassador of Sri Lanka, Palitha Kohona. The UN's failure to speak and act while 40,000 civilians were killed in Sri Lanka in 2009 is one of the UN's biggest failures under Ban, among with its unexplained dismissal of claims for bringing cholera into Haiti.

  The anti-Tamil impulse of Sri Lanka's ruling family was in fact raised by Lee Kuan Yew in Plate's first Giant of Asia book.

   But what's been done since? Ban recently accepted what's called a “whitewash” report about Sri Lanka from Japan's Ambassador Nishida, along with Bangadesh's Ambassador Monem, Kohona, the Permanent Representative of Romania and the Deputy Permanent Representative of Nigeria.

   The UN didn't release the report, which Ban went on to praise when asked in Geneva about Sri Lanka. And Ambassador Nishida, when Inner City Press asked for the report, said it would first be given to all member states.

   Kohona on Tuesday in the Princeton Club's lobby told Inner City Press this hand-over took place last week, but not in the UN -- in the Japanese mission. It seems timed to counteract the belated talk of accountability at the Human Rights Council in Geneva. This is how the UN works: Giants of Asia, indeed.

   Hardly mentioned Tuesday night was Africa, where most of the UN's work is. On March 5 Inner City Press asked Ban, at the Security Council stakeout, about inaction on 126 rapes in Minova by the Congolese Army, which the UN supports.

  After the rapes, under Ban's stated Human Rights Due Diligence Policy, the UN support was to have stopped. But it still hasn't.

   Two days later his Department of Peacekeeping Operations, led for the fourth time in a row by a Frenchman -- this is how the UN works -- offered belated spin to friendlier journalists about threatening two unidentified units of the Congolese Army with loss of support if they don't prosecute by an unspecified deadline.

  So has Ban allowed his Human Rights Due Diligence Policy to be less than meaningful, under France's Under Secretary General for Peacekeeping Herve Ladsous?

   Inner City Press' critique of this has given rise to a formal but undisclosed complaint against it, in a Kafka-esque system without rules. The head of the Ban's Department of Public Information was in attendance Tuesday night, and quite polite. 

  But despite requests, including from New York Civil Liberties Union then the new Free UN Coalition for Access, there are still no due process rules for journalists at the UN. We will have more on this, how the UN does not work.

   We will also have more about the book, about mobility, Sri Lanka, Africa, Asia and Haiti. Watch this site.

Pro-Asia Mahbubani Says Myanmar “Doing Badly,” Ban Ki-moon “In a Rough Patch”

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, October 22 -- Elite pro-Asia academic Kishore Mahbubani, speaking Friday at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, said that Myanmar is “doing badly.”

Also in response to a question from Inner City Press about the UN Secretary General, Mahbubani's first response was that S-G Ban Ki-moon “has hit a rough patch.”

Given that in other response Mahbubani said that Deng Xioping should have gotten the Nobel Peace Prize and that Asia is a much more serious power than the Muslim world, that he nevertheless could not present a story of an upward trend line about Myanmar or Ban Ki-moon is significant.

By contrast, Ban told Seoul's Yonhap that he is confident in receiving a second terms as S-G (Team Ban contests the translation) and that the reviews of his performance by the international community have been “very positive.” But even Mahbubani could not deliver a positive review.

Mahbubani's remarks were delivered in a wood paneled room over Park Avenue and 68th Street, lined with oil painting of somber Caucasian old men. This was largely the audience, too, but for two younger women who spoke of human rights.

In response, Mahbubani said that human rights cannot be spread by sanctions, and that “after Guantanamo Bay, no one takes the US State Department Human Rights Reports seriously.”

Among the audience were the sister of Senator John Kerry, who works at the US Mission to the UN, and Ban Ki-moon's speechwriter Michael Myer, among with John Brademas and David Denoon of NYU, both of whom asked questions.

Listed but not questioning was “Judith Miller, Journalist.” One wondered what she thinks of Mahbubani's analysis that the US wrongfully spends 80% of its foreign policy on the Muslim world, including Iraq, while it should be devoting those resources to countering China's rise.

While Mahbabani said that China overplayed its hand in strong-arming Japan to return its ship captain, one also wonders what he'd make of China's moves to block the release of a UN Sudan Sanctions Committee report asserting that Chinese bullets were found in Darfur after an attack on UN peacekeepers there. The event ended at 9 am, and Mahbubani said he had to catch at 10 am train.

Footnotes: Mahbubani told the audience that he is used to being attacked, most recently on by a historian while taping this week's Fareed Zakaria GPS show on CNN. He praised Zakaria's piece which praises India -- a regular circle of praise.

Just as Tom Friedman editorialized about conversation with Mahbubani over tea, Mahbubani recounted a talk with a “senior State Department official over tea.” In these heady circles, the UN and Ban Ki-moon are an afterthought, going through a rough patch. Watch this site.

Mahbubani's talk was reminiscent of Tom Plate's "Giants of Asia" talk at the Singaporean Mission to the UN earlier this year, and his book series by that name which now, Inner City Press has been told, will not include Ban Ki-moon. We'll see.

UN's Ban To Be 3rd "Giant of Asia" by Tom Plate, Lee Kuan Yew's Confidante on Sri Lankan "Ethnic Cleansing"

By Matthew Russell Lee, Exclusive

UNITED NATIONS, August 11 -- Starting with a 200 page book of “Conversations with Lee Kuan Yew,” the get-things-done founder of modern Singapore, American author Tom Plate is engaged in a Giants of Asia trilogy. The next in the series is Mahathir Mohamad of Malaysia.

The third Giant of Asia, Plate said at a VIP book party on August 10, will be UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

Plate told an audience including the Permanent Representatives to the UN of Vietnam, Costa Rica, The Netherlands and of course Singapore, which hosted to event, that in his experience Asian leaders are more concerned about community rights than individual or human rights.

He asked rhetorically, do you want to solve the problem of drug gangs in Los Angeles? Give Lee Kuan Yew $10 billion, and look away for 18 months. Come back and it will be solved.

Some in the audience wondered what might happen during those 18 months, from the leader who instituted caning for the mis disposal or even chewing of gum. A professor in the audience asked about the balance between development and human rights.

Plate responded that while to the “Western” mind, publicly punishing the wrong person in order to send a message to others might violate due process, to Lee Kuan Yew and presumably the other Giants of Asia, the calculus is not so simple.

If the mis-punishment helps the community at large, it might on balance be a good thing, Plate said.

Inner City Press, invited without conditions to the event but then asked to not mention at least one of the attendees, asked Plate if he would consider interviewing some of the more openly authoritarian strong men of Asia, including Than Shwe of Myanmar and Kim Jong-Il of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

Plate replied that if asked to go to Pyongyang and given access to Kim Jong-Il, he would be on the next plane. He said that he doubted Than Shwe, at 76, could endure the type of multi-day interview process which he engaged in with Lee Kuan Yew.

One wonders, then, how a sitting Secretary General, embroiled in a management scandal triggered most recently by the damning End of Assignment Report of outgoing lead UN investigator Inga Britt Ahlenius, will have time to sit for this Giants of Asia profile.

Without attributing the concerns, there seem to have been a belated request not to publicize the identity of Plate's third Giant of Asia until after Mr. Ban's second term is more secure. But, one skeptic in the audience asked, is the problem here really the publicity or the vanity book project itself?

Inner City Press first heard of Plate's book when a section about Sri Lanka was circulated, largely by the Tamil diaspora. Lee Kwan Yew is quoted on page 55 saying the

“example is Sri Lanka. It is not a happy, united country. Yes, they [the majority Sinhalese government] have beaten the Tamil Tigers this time, but the Sinhalese who are less capable are putting down a minority of Jaffna Tamils who are more capable. They were squeezing them out. That's why the Tamils rebelled. But I do not see them ethnic cleansing all two million plus Jaffna Tamils. The Jaffna Tamils have been in Sri Lanka as long as the Sinhalese...[referring to Sri Lanka's president Mahinda Rajapaksa] 'I've read his speeches and I knew he was a Sinhalese extremist. I cannot change his mind.'”

Plate was asked about this section of the book, and said that it was difficult to keep it in. Afterward, Inner City Press asked Plate to explain: who had wanted the section to come out? Of all that he said Tuesday night, this was the only time that Plate asked to go off the record. We will respect that, just as we'll respect the request to omit the presence of at least one individual and entourage.

Singapore's Mission to the UN, its Permanent Representative Vanu Gopala Menon, his Deputy, wife and staff are to be commended for hosting such an eclectic crowd, and serving afterward such good food, including the Indian paratha bread renamed roti -- and tinged with coconut -- when it arrived in Lee Kuan Yew's giant laboratory in one of the smallest nation states.

There were Tamil advocates among the attendees, including the son of the plaintiff in a recent free speech case in the U.S. Supreme Court. Some wondered at the irony of Ban Ki-moon, who long delayed naming, and still has not begun, a panel about accountability for civilian deaths in Sri Lanka in 2009, choosing as his conversational biographer the writer who coaxed the above quoted analysis of ethnic cleansing and Sinhalese extremism in Sri Lanka, to the level of the president.

We will have more on this and on the rest of Plate's illuminating talk, including his and Lee Kuan Yew's views of the UN and the ways in which its Secretary General are elected and, at times, re-elected. The interplay of Ban's drive for re-election and his participation as Plate's third “Giant of Asia” will also be explored.