On Syria, Civil Rights Official Hilary Shelton Tells Inner City Press War Takes from Poor, Haiti Echo, McCain Contrast

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, September 18 -- While votes in the US Congress on military action on Syria were averted for now by the US - Russia deal struck in Geneva, Washington is still abuzz with different views of just what happened.

  Inner City Press on Tuesday night asked Hilary O. Shelton, the director of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's Washington office, what he thought of Syria.

  He said that finding ways to avert engaging in war is always the best policy, war should always be reserved as the absolute last option. In addition to the loss of human life, money and resources spent on war is taken away from pressing basic human needs and programs of the poor in the US. 

He recalled the "Iraqi war supplemental in its first year under the Bush administration of $125 billion." He also recounted being asked under President Bill Clinton if the US should invade Haiti. No, he said, and went to the White House to make the point.

Instead, the US sent Colin Powell, Sam Nunn and Jimmy Carter to negotiate. Haiti was (and is) a poor country, he said, that didn't need an American military invasion.

Shelton authorized the use of what he said, asking only that it be clear that it is not the official position of the NAACP, founded in Niagara, Canada 140 years ago and instrumental in civil rights legislation since, including voting rights which he credited for stopping or pausing the bombing of Syria.

Syria is not as poor as Haiti, but it is unclear at least to Inner City Press if more violence, or arming Al Nusra or ISIS, is the answer. Senator John McCain, speaking Tuesday at the Council on Foreign Relations, views it differently. He said President Obama should not have taken the question to Congress but rather simply done it, and with the usual "blow-back" afterward. The positions could not be more different. Watch this site.

   

On S. Sudan Resolution, UN Role on Borders of Blue Nile & Kordofan Unclear, Troop Numbers Game

By Matthew Russell Lee, Exclusive

UNITED NATIONS, July 6, updated -- With the countdown to South Sudan's formal declaration of independence on July 9 begun, at the UN in New York on Wednesday negotiations on the resolution for a new peacekeeping mission went into overtime.

A Deputy Permanent Representative emerged from the Security Council chamber and told Inner City Press that while the size of the mission will be reconsidered after three or six months, a sticking point is whether and how the disputed borders in South Kordofan and Blue Nile states will be monitored.

“If the North does not agree,” the DPR told Inner City Press, “there can't be any UN peacekeepers there.”

Khartoum has agreed to Ethiopian troops in Abyei, but has stepped away from a deal about South Kordofan. When Inner City Press asked the UN earlier on Wednesday to confirm troops build ups in South Kordofan, the response was a reiteration of Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's call for freedom of movement. Does that mean the UN doesn't have freedom of movement? Yes, was the answer. Video here, from Minute 47:30.

Questions posed to the UN in New York on July 5 were then e-mailed to UNMIS in Sudan, but have yet to be answered. A delegation from the Department of Peacekeeping Operations came out of the Security Council at 5 pm on Wednesday. Referring to the number of troops proposed, Inner City Press asked, “Seven thousand?” A UN military official laughed; a civilian official said “DPKO has no comment.”

[See update below: UK says between six and seven thousand.]

On the numbers, a Permanent Representative inside the negotiations told Inner City Press that DPKO while asking for 7000 also refers to a 5400 figure. We'll have more on this.

Footnote: as the above was finished, the Obama administration announced its delegation to Juba, including Susan Rice, Colin Powell, Brooke Anderson, Rep. Donald Payne, Princeton Lyman, Donald Steinberg, Africom's Carter F. Ham, and Johnnie Carson. “Johnny Carson?” a US official asked. Not that Johnny Carson...

Update of 7:35 pm -- among Western P-5 Permanent Representative, the UK's Mark Lyall Grant emerged and told Inner City Press, somewhere between six and seven thousand. France's Gerard Araud said nothing. And Susan Rice of the US... is still inside the Council, if the presence of USUN body guards is any guide.

Update of 8 pm -- the problem of adopting the resolution on Friday has apparently been solved: the resolution will say that the mission is created "upon" independence, and will be voted on Friday. The last of the diplomats have left.