#LADSOUS2013 Puts a Video Face on a Problem from UN to DRC and Haiti, Sudan, Drones and Rape

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, January 27 -- When a person committing or covering up crimes or violations of human rights is barely known by the public, what is the next step?

  Focusing on Joseph Kony of the Lord's Resistance Army from Uganda in 2012, a campaign launched a slick 30 minute video and a Twitter hashtag: #KONY2012.

  At the UN, Inner City Press asked officials and diplomats about #KONY2012.

  More recently, now in January 2013, Inner City Press asked Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's Office of the Spokesperson to respond to Uganda's claims that Kony is in Darfur, where the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations has a $1.5 billion peacekeeping mission. The UN has yet to answer.

   But there another figure, who refuses Press questions about Darfur, Kony and the Congo who deserves to be better known: DPKO chief Herve Ladsous. Click here for a first profile of Ladsous.

 Here is the inital beta video, #LADSOUS2013.  

Sudan Death Sentences Met with UN Silence, LRA in Darfur Called Unconfirmed

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, November 11 -- With authorities in Sudan condemning to death some 20 alleged rebels, Inner City Press on Thursday asked UN acting deputy spokesperson Farhan Haq if the peacekeeping mission in Darfur or its chief Ibrahim Gambari had anything to say about the death sentences, which the Liberation and Justice Movement rebels says violates their ceasefire agreement with Khartoum. Video here at 8:18.

“There is no comment from Mr. Gambari or UNAMID,” Haq answered. On whether the death sentences will undermine LJM's negotiations in Doha with the government of Omar al Bashir, who has been indicted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes and genocide, Haq said of mediator Djibril Bassole that if there's a problem, “he'll inform... the public about any particular obstacle.”

But Bassole rarely reports to the public on the Doha process, which does not include JEM or the movement of Abdul Wahid Nur or now the Movement of Nomads.

Meanwhile Inner City Press asked Haq if UNAMID will do anything about the Lord's Resistance Army and its leader Joseph Kony, also indicted by the ICC, who are now reported to be in Darfur. “Those reports have not been confirmed,” Haq said. He'd begun by saying, “If you need to have the last question” -- before responding with a pre-prepared statement. Video here at 19:39.

Nor would Haq confirm reports that the UN-supported African Union peacekeepers in Somalia have blocked Somali parliamentarians from meeting. Haq said to ask the African Union, despite the UN's own envoy Augustine Mahiga. Video here, from Minute 17:29.

The Somalia work of either the UN or European Union was supposed to be boosted on November 1 by the inclusion of longtime UN official Charles Petrie. But tens days past that deadline, Petrie is still quoted about his last UN assignment, Burundi, condemning violence. We'll check on Petrie's location, Haq said. Video here, from Minute 14:25.

But there are simple questions pending in his office for more than a week now, including one about Genocide Prevention reiterated this week. Watch this site.

Footnote: The Security Council on Thursday moved its Western Sahara briefing up from November 23 to November 16 after their Sudan debate. France has said next week was too busy. Watch this site.

ICC Can't Provide Assurance to LRA's Kony, Despite Ugandan Promise and Chissano's

By Matthew Russell Lee
www.innercitypress.com/icclra1egg071709.html

UNITED NATIONS, July 16 -- Civilians continue to be chopped up and kidnapped and rape by the Lord's Resistance Army while a peace agreement lies unsigned, largely because its seeming promise that LRA leader Joseph Kony would be tried in Uganda and not by the International Criminal Court in The Hague cannot be substantiated. The UN's outgoing envoy to the LRA affected areas Joaquim Chissano on July 17 told Inner City Press that Kony should rest assured that the peace agreement provides for his trial in Uganda, not the Hague. But there is no way to know if the ICC judges in The Hague will accept the Ugandan's process as sufficient to drop the ICC warrant.

Inner City Press asked the President of the Assembly of State Parties of the ICC and its Rome Statute, Liechtenstein Ambassador Christian Wenaweser if the ICC could somehow pre-certify Uganda's process as complementary, and likely to replace the ICC warrants. Wenaweser replied that "It is the job of the ICC to look at the national judicial process.. I don't know how you can do that in an effective way before they are actually underway." Video here, from Minute 19:15.

This calls into question the statements of Chissano, and of Uganda's Ambassador to the UN Ruganda that Kony would face justice in Uganda, not the Hague. Actually, there is no way to know. Realistically, it is not surprising that Joseph Kony would not sign and turn himself in under these circumstances.

Why hasn't the ICC developed a procedure to pre-certify countries' procedures as complimentary, to avoid this chicken and egg standoff in which more and more civilians are killed? Some think that the leaders of the international criminal justice movement are more concerned with their own purity of concept than with the realities of more and more dead civilians. Watch this site.

Footnote: Inner City Press asked Chissano if Kony still has his cell phone number. Yes, Chissano said, before adding that he was returning a phone to the UN unless and until his mandate is re-activated. Is that the cell phone that Kony would call, Inner City Press asked. No, Chissano said, he has my other number. But he never calls it. Video here.

And see, www.innercitypress.com/icclra1egg071709.html

Little Law & Order at the UN, Guinea Crimes Taint Ban's Eulogy

Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at UN
www.innercitypress.com/unlaw1guinea040109.html

UNITED NATIONS, April 1 -- Uganda's notorious rebel movement, the Lord's Resistance Army, made a rare appearance on American network television on March 31. It was not on a news program or documentary, but rather as part of the plot of an episode of NBC's Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. A homeless man find a Uganda girl in a vacant lot, slashed across the throat and barely alive. The show's detectives follow leads to a church in Staten Island then back to Harlem, where a former LRA child soldier lives with other refugees. He in turn leads them to “the Devil of Gulu,” now working as a janitor and described as nearly indicted by the International Criminal Court before he left the region.

In the run-up to the episode's airing, when the United Nations spokesperson twice promoted the show and the UN's role in it -- CNN covered it as the first use of the UN premises by a network TV program -- Inner City Press had guessed that it would portray LRA leader Joseph Kony, indicted by the ICC and on the run in Congo. But if Law & Order is indeed “ripped from the headlines,” this Devil of Gulu is based on a lower ranking LRA captain.

After several plot twists, the show says that the U.S. government will extradite the Devil of Gulu to the ICC in the Hague. With the U.S. still not a member of the ICC, it is not known if this would or could happen. At a UN Security Council end of presidency reception this week at Libya House, the topic arose, whether the U.S. could or would arrest and extradite to the Hague Sudan's President Omar al Bashir if he came to the U.S..

The UN itself made only slight appearances in the episode. A New York City prosecutor enters through the 46th Street gate and talks with a former law school classmate, now with UNHCR, who arranges for her to receive LRA photographs from the ICC in the Hague. The same character appears in the 42nd Street driveway, explaining that the UN would not consider a person who began as a child soldier to later be guilty of war crimes, even if he or she continued serving after hitting age 18. Finally, the detectives walk on a ramp in the visitors' lobby. That's it.

Contrary to what UN officials breathlessly projected to Inner City Press during the panel discussion at the UN about another TV show, Battlestar Galactica, there was no quote at the end of the Law & Order episode from the UN's expert on children and armed conflict, Radhika Coomaraswamy. The UN building appeared three times, in passing; the only UN system speaker was a representative of the Geneva-based refugee agency, UNHCR. As the spokesperson for Secretary General Ban Ki-moon routinely points out, the ICC is not a UN body. So was this really Law & Order, the UN edition?

Footnote: at a higher-brow level of the culture, complete with white wine and mini quiches 12 floors above the UN entrance across First Avenue, the International Peace Institute on the same night as the Law & Order episode offered a by-invitation only dualogue between outgoing New York Times bureau chief for West Africa, Lydia Polgreen and former Times reporter Warren Hogue, now IPI vice president. In the nature of a question, Hogue said among other things that IPI is studying the effect of drug trans-shipment on the stability of states in West Africa.

Ms. Polgreen replied about the assassination of leaders in Guinea-Bissau, and the military takeover in Guinea Conakry. That followed the death by natural causes of the country's longtime dictator Lansana Conte, whose passing triggered a laudatory statement by the UN's Ban Ki-moon. Shortly thereafter, a series of confessions including by Conte's son on Guinean television made clear that the leader praised by Ban had used his position and even diplomatic pouch and privileges to traffic drugs to Europe. There has been no retraction or clarification of Ban's eulogy. Is this Law and Order?

And see, www.innercitypress.com/unlaw1guinea040109.html

In Congo, Civilians Bear the Brunt as UN Attacks NGOs and Whistleblowing General Diaz

Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at UN
www.innercitypress.com/drc3ngos022509.html

UNITED NATIONS, February 25 -- In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, it is said that Rwandan troops are leaving today, to be followed by the end of the week by Ugandan forces involved in the ill-fated hunt for Joseph Kony and the Lord's Resistance Army that resulted in LRA killings of 900 civilians. But questions have arisen whether all of the Rwandans are leaving, and if the Ugandans will leave at all.

DRC President Joseph Kabila is trying to remove the head of the National Assembly, who has raised questions about Kabila's invitation of foreign armies onto Congolese soil. Local leaders in Dungu in north Congo, where the LRA is still on the loose, are demanding that either the Ugandans or Congo's ragtag army stay and finish off the LRA, which they liken to a wounded lion.

Despite the claim that the UN Mission in the Congo, MONUC, is most focused on protecting civilians, they did almost nothing when the LRA began a wave of killing on Christmas of last year. Tuesday at UN Headquarters, Human Rights Watch's Congo expert Anneke Van Woudenberg told the Press that MONUC wasn't even informed of the assault on the LRA until hours before it took place.

Inner City Press asked Ms. Van Woudenberg for HRW's view on whether the United States, as a Permanent Five member of the Security Council which provided funding and planning to the Ugandan army, had a duty to give more advance warning to MONUC, so that civilians could be protected. Ms. Van Woudenberg responded that it was perhaps understandable that only a few people not involved in the planning would be told before the action started. But can it be that the U.S. doesn't trust the head of MONUC, Alan Doss?

Doss in recent weeks has adopted a combative approach, not to warlords but to the press and NGOs. His new communications chief, Kevin Kennedy, issued a stinging rebuke of a Medecins Sans Frontieres report about the north Congo killings. While the head of the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations Alain Le Roy upon his return from Afghanistan urged a more detailed response, the resulting letter to MSF was given little publicity.

On February 23, Inner City Press asked MSF's Sophie Delaunay if the group has any second-thoughts about the report, after the UN called it "unfounded." No, she said, the report is what happened in norther Congo, it was "outrageous" and it had to be said. MONUC is known to dispute even the titles of NGOs' reports on the Congo. MONUC will let no insult stand, it seems.

This applies equally to the damning report by Spanish General Diaz, who left MONUC after he found a less than friendly reception by Alan Doss. Inner City Press has asked for the UN's comments on Diaz's end of mission critique, and the response has been to vilify Diaz as a quitter, even as having had a nervous breakdown. But Inner City Press has heard that Doss never wanted Diaz, preferring instead an African general. MONUC didn't even pick Diaz up from the airport when he arrived. Spain's mission in Kinshasa had to do it, at the eleventh hour. It was hardly an auspicious beginning. Peacekeeping, indeed.

While the UN's top humanitarian John Holmes, when Inner City Press asked him about HRW's report this month of 100 killings of civilians by the fleeing FDLR military said "I hope it's not true," Ms. Van Woudenberg said that it's that the UN couldn't go out and do their own count for two weeks. She expects that Holmes will now confirm the report. We'll see -- Holmes will return to New York on Friday, from Colombia and a controversial government-controlled trip to Sri Lanka.

When the International Criminal Court screened its Prosecutor's opening statements again Thomas Lubanga in his old stomping grounds in Bunia, Ms. Van Woudenberg was there. She told Inner City Press that the room chosen was too small, and that students outside, some supportive of Lubanga and the UPC militia, began to make noise. The ICC cancelled the afternoon's screening, which was Lubanga's lawyers' chance to speak. The ICC ended up appearing to be one-sided. Ms. Van Woudenberg suggested they increase their outreach.

While Amnesty International has called on the UN Mission in Sudan, UNMIS, to refrain from helping transfer two of the LRA's leaders, both indicted by the ICC, to Uganda, HRW has yet to take a formal position on this. Ms. Van Woudenberg recounted her meetings with warlords from Laurent Nkunda to Bosco Ntaganda. The latter, she said, began with Rwandan forces of Paul Kagame back in 1991. In a uniquely Congolese trajectory, Bosco passed to the AFDL which overthrew Mobutu and tried the same with Desire Kabila, pere, then moved on to the UPC in Ituri before joining the CNDP, at first under and now over Laurent Nkunda.

Ms. Van Woudenberg told the Press that the Congolese government in May 2007 asked MONUC to help apprehend Bosco, who has been indicted by the ICC. Inner City Press asked if this request has been rescinded, now that Kabila's government wants to work with the CNDP. Ms. Van Woudenberg said it has not been revoked, and provides an opportunity. But with the UN system so invested in the regime of Kabila, to the point where only his opponents are indicted and delivered to the ICC, it's hard to imagine MONUC seeking to use a request that has been politically superseded in order to apprehend Bosco.

In fact, as Ms. Van Woudenberg confirmed, warlord Peter Kerim who killed and kidnapped UN peacekeepers in 2006 is now a colonel in the Congolese Army, and the UN says little to nothing about it. Ms. Van Woudenberg said that the Congolese government, at a minimum, was involved in brokering an impunity deal with Kerim. But was the UN also involved?

In the course of Ms. Van Woudenberg travels in Congo -- she is there seven months a year, she says -- she recently met Ugandan General Patrick in the town on Dungu. Gen. Patrick was involved in the UPDF's bloody forced disarmament campaign in Uganda's Karamoja region, in which the UN Development Program was involved. Gen. Patrick told her, I know Human Rights Watch, you are the ones who criticized us in Karamoja. And that is to HRW's credit.

Ms. Van Woudenberg's presentation was keyed to Ban Ki-moon's travel this week to the Congo. She said that Ban should "bang his hand on the table" on several of these issues. Somehow that's hard to imagine. Watch this site.

And see, www.innercitypress.com/drc3ngos022509.html

ICC's Ocampo Defends His Africa-Only Focus, His Strategy In Question

Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at UN
www.innercitypress.com/icc1africa071708.html

UNITED NATIONS, July 17 -- International Criminal Court prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo told the Press on Thursday, "Because I respect African leaders, I invite them to refer to me the case, and they did it." While dodging questions about his request for an arrest warrant against Sudan's president Omar Al-Bashir, Ocampo responded to Inner City Press' question about why all of his prosecutions so far have been in Africa, and not for example in Colombia, Myanmar or North Korea. He responded that he visited Colombia last November, and will again "next month," to monitor national proceedings. Those proceedings have offered a form of immunity to government-backed paramilitary forces, but apparently Ocampo is satisfied with that. Perhaps, then, Sudan should have put its two indictees Ahmad Harun and Ali Kushayb on trial, then offered then a slap on the wrist. Behind the scenes, Ocampo has been telling Ambassadors of Permanent Five members of the Security Council, and some of these have off the record been telling the press, that if Al-Bashir now turns over the two indictees, the prosecution against him might go away or be put on hold. Ocampo's prosecutorial strategy -- reversing the normal approach of trying to turn underlings against their boss -- and his performance are both subject to question. But on Thursday few answers were provided.

Inner City Press asked Ocampo about both the Thomas Lubanga case, which has been suspended due to his office's failure to show its evidence to the defense lawyers, and about the unacted-on arrest warrant against Joseph Kony of Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army. Video here, from Minute 25:52. On Lubanga, Ocampo said "the problem was how to disclose some documents." First, providing discovery material to the defense is a basic principle of fair prosecution. Second, Inner City Press is told by sources inside the UN Secretariat and its Congo peacekeeping mission, MONUC, that they never expected Ocampo to base his prosecution on the hearsay material they provided him, but he did. Now that material must be disclosed, and they are unhappy. Neither they nor the Western members of the Permanent Five, however, will criticize Ocampo in public. That would be politically incorrect.

Ocampo, however, drapes himself in the role of the last of the just, an objective man, a slave to justice. Asked why all his prosecutions have been in Africa, he said, "I cannot respect geographical balance, I cannot respect gender balance." Video here, from Minute 25:52. But how can it be that a court set up to try genocide and child soldier recruitment, among other high crimes, is focused only on Africa? Ocampo, and later in his defense the foreign minister of Costa Rica Bruno Stagno Ugarte, claim this is because the presidents of Uganda and Democratic Republic of Congo have referred cases to Ocampo. First, Ocampo admitted that he invited them to make specific referrals, to make a showing of his respect for African leaders. Second, this has created a conflict of interest or bias, in which he has not for example investigated or at least prosecuted crimes of the Ugandan army, only the LRA. Ocampo never answered the question about Joseph Kony, who meets opening with UN officials like Joachim Chissano. Perhaps there was not enough media interest to keep Ocampo focused on the LRA case, or actually succeeding in the case of Lubanga.

In Kinshasa last month, Security Council Ambassadors emphasized to Inner City Press that Congolese president Joseph Kabila had praised them and the ICC for the prospection of Lubanga and especially Jean-Pierre Bemba. But Bemba was Kabila's main opponent in the last elections. Even in Congo, the ICC is arguably being used politically. These questions should be answered and not dodged.

Footnote: Inner City Press asked Ruth Wijdenbosch, President of the Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee of Suriname, which just joined the ICC, about reports that the U.S. in 2007 had sought anti-ICC "non-surrender" agreements from Suriname. Video here, at end. She acknowledged the U.S. attempts and said they have stopped -- not as some argue because the U.S. agrees, or agreed, with Ocampo's Darfur prosecutions, but because by arrogantly demanding the agreements the U.S. was "losing friends" in Latin America, presumably to Hugo Chavez. So Hugo Chavez, under this theory, has helped the ICC.

And see, www.innercitypress.com/icc1africa071708.html

At UN, Chissano Says Council Ready to Defer to Uganda on Kony, ICC as Well

Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at UN
www.innercitypress.com/un5lra062008.html

UNITED NATIONS, June 20 -- As the Lord's Resistance Army rampages through the Congo, Southern Sudan and the Central African Republic, the UN's envoy to the LRA-affected areas Joaquim Chissano briefed the Security Council on Friday. Afterwards he told Inner City Press that "the Council was ready to consider any decision taken by the government of Uganda" to suspend the indictment of the LRA's Joseph Kony by the International Criminal Court, and put Kony on trial in Uganda instead. Video here, from Minute 7:55.

Inner City Press asked, why then has Kony not signed the peace agreement? Chissano said that perhaps "Kony needs clarification." Chissano said that recent attacks in Southern Sudan and the Congo are "clearly LRA," and that those in the Central African Republic are "probably" LRA, the "evidence" points that way. Video here, from Minute 3:53. Then Chissano left the stakeout, surrounded by an entourage which did not permit any follow-up questions. Why is there so little talk about the acts of the government of Uganda?

The person who Chissano named as representing Kony, David Matsanga, has said

"We can use the United Nations Security Council resolution and chapter seven to go to the UN Security Council, which the government of Uganda should do as a referral state, to say the UN Security Council, please, the warrants are a threat. Can you remove them from us so that general Joseph Kony and others can come and sign and walk free and assemble and do things? But he has said he is not going to sign an agreement in Juba because he does not feel safe over there."

Unlike other prosecutorial offices, the ICC appears to make a major distinction based on where its cases come from. If referred by a government, that government retains control to turn the process off and "take it home." That this can imply impunity was not, according to Chissano, much of a concern. Some call it double standard.

And see, www.innercitypress.com/un5lra062008.html

UK Schizophrenic on Human Rights, But Says No Impunity for Lord's Resistance Army's Kony

Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at UN
www.innercitypress.com/uk1sc050208.html

UNITED NATIONS, May 2 -- The UK, which holds the UN Security Council presidency this month, demonstrated incongruous positions on human rights in recent days. On April 30, along with France and the United States, it opposed requests to include human rights in the Council's resolution on Western Sahara. On the morning May 2, it agreed to a Presidential Statement on Myanmar which dropped any reference to Nobel Prize-winning Burmese dissident Aung San Suu Kyi.

UK Ambassador John Sawers glossed over both issues when asked about them at a press conference later in the day. But when asked by Inner City Press if the UK would agree to suspend the International Criminal Court indictments of Joseph Kony and other leaders of Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army, Amb. Sawers said that the UK would oppose the Council doing that. "The indictments of the ICC should stand," he said. "It would be for the ICC to determine if the trial arrangements in a particular country for someone they indicted" are an appropriate substitute for proceeding with the indictment. Video here, from Minute 30:42.

On the issue of accountability within the UN, the UK is not so strong. Inner City Press asked Amb. Sawers about charges, widely publicized including in Britain, that UN peacekeepers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo engaged in trading of gold and guns, and that the UN's Office of Internal Oversight Services essentially covered-up these crimes. "I have no comment on that," Amb. Sawers said.

One analysis has it that since the UK punches above its weight through the UN, it is hard pressed to criticize the Organization no matter what it does. We'll see.

Footnote: well-placed diplomatic sources told Inner City Press on Friday night that the background to the Myanmar statement was that Ibrahim Gambari had asked the Council to hold off, to allow him to travel to Myanmar and deliver these points in person to the regime. But when he was denied entry, he gave the green light to the Council. China, in this account, demanded that any statement tip its chapeau to Myanmar's sovereignty, the UN's loose "good office" role, and that any solution must come from the Burmese -- well, Myanmarese, or Myanmarian -- people themselves, and that Aung San Suu Kyi's name must come out. And the US and UK agreed, and then agreed to cover it up and dodge questions. And so it goes...

And see, www.innercitypress.com/uk1sc050208.html

At UN, Talk of Uganda Asking to Suspend War Crimes Indictment of Lord's Resistance Army

Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at UN
www.innercitypress.com/un3lrasc032708.ht

UNITED NATIONS, March 27 -- With the planned signing day of a peace treaty between Uganda and the Lord's Resistance Army put back to April 5, on Thursday France's Ambassador to the UN Jean-Maurice Ripert told Inner City Press that the Security Council could suspend for months or a year the International Criminal Court's indictments of the LRA leaders including Joseph Kony "if the government pursues its own tribunal or... traditional pursuits." Video here, from Minute 2:15.

Ambassador Ripert's language tracks the agreement, still not finalized, between Uganda's Museveni government and the LRA, providing for "a special division of the High Court of Uganda, to try individuals who are alleged to have committed serious crimes during the conflict." And so, is the fix in, that Museveni has committed to ask for, and the Security Council has somehow committed to give, a year suspension of the ICC indictments? "I'm not saying we'd support it," France's Amb. Ripert added.

Inner City Press asked Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin, president of the Council for this month, about Wednesday's closed-door briefing of the Council about Uganda. Was there a discussion of the Lord's Resistance Army? Video here, from Minute 7:41

"The members of the Council only took in the information," Amb. Churkin responded. But what information? Watch this site.

And see, www.innercitypress.com/un3lrasc032708.html

As Uganda's Kony Angles for Impunity, Council Blows Off Menkerios, Kofi Feted Despite Karim

Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at UN
www.innercitypress.com/un2lrauganda032008.html

UNITED NATIONS, March 20 -- A mere week before the deadline for the Lord's Resistance Army to sign a peace treaty with the Museveni government of Uganda, the UN Security Council couldn't find time to hear a briefing on the conflict from Haile Menkerios, UN Assistant Secretary-General for Political Affairs.

Mr. Menkerios waited in the Council chamber and finally left after noon. Inner City Press caught up with him and asked what had happened in the Council. "They didn't have time," Menkerios said. "They told me to come back next Wednesday." That is literally the day before LRA leader Joseph Kony, indicted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court, is to appear to Juba in South Sudan and sign the peace treaty. Kony through his lawyers has said he will only sign if the ICC indictments are dropped. "He's said that several times," Menkerios told Inner City Press. "Irrespective of where he moves" -- reportedly, Kony is in the Central African Republic -- "he is expected to come to Juba to sign, Chissano expects him to sign."

Inner City Press asked if there might have been a plan, prior to the Council canceling Menkerios' appearance, to issue a Presidential Statement to focus the minds of the parties, the LRA and Museveni. "I don't know what the Council was thinking," Menkerios said, adding that if the peace agreement is signed, then Special Envoy Chissano will come and brief.

News analysis: but if Kony is to be believed, he will only sign if he is given assurances that the ICC indictments will not be enforced. Some say that the Museveni government is making precisely that promise, though not formally until an agreement is signed.

Meanwhile at New York's Waldorf=Astoria Hotel, where a banquet hall was being prepared with white flowers and an enormous video screen for a ceremony for Kofi Annan, UN human rights personalities like Allan Rock and Louise Arbour traded speeches from deep red leather chairs, about the end of impunity. But when will the impunity end? Beyond Kony, Kofi Annan himself promised there would be justice for Eastern Congo warlord Peter Karim, who recruited child soldiers and kidnapped seven UN peacekeepers, killing two of them. But now more than a year into Annan's successor's term, Karim is still at large, living large, from a hotel in Kinshasa to an officer's post in the Congolese Army. End of impunity indeed...

And see, www.innercitypress.com/un4lracar032908.html

As One Congo Warlord Is Arrested, Peter Karim and Others Are Off the Hook, in Uganda and Sudan, ICC Silent on Kenya

Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at UN
www.innercitypress.com/icc1ituri020708.html

UNITED NATIONS, February 7 -- The International Criminal Court's registrar Bruno Catala spoke at the UN on Thursday, bragging about the ICC's arrest of Congolese warlord Mathieu Ngudjolo Chui, identified as a former leader of the National Integrationist Front (FNI), for war crimes. Inner City Press asked Catala why it took the ICC eight months from indictment until arrest, if the delay involved any negotiations with the Congolese government. Catala responded that the ICC does not negotiate. He responded similarly when asked about the immunity deal given to rebel general Laurent Nkunda in the Kivus in the DR Congo -- the ICC was not part of the negotiation of that immunity which, Catala claims, did not include war crimes or other ICC-relevant crimes.

Catala quoted the ICC's deputy prosecutor Fatou Bensouda that the ICC's phase of investigation in Ituri is now over, and it will turn its attention to the Kivus. But Ngudjolo's co-warlord Peter Karim is still in the Congolese Army, despite additionally having kidnapped and killed UN peacekeepers. Since Karim ultimately released some of the peacekeepers, it appears that he got some deal, that Ngudjolo has been indicted and arrested, but not Karim.

Another pending deal, pushed by U.S. envoys Tim Shortly and Makita James, would have the LRA indictees turn themselves over to national justice in Uganda, thus sidestepping the ICC. Catala called the continued freedom of the LRA indictees "not a good example."

Catala said the ICC cannot confirm that Lord's Resistance Army indictee Vincent Otti is dead, even though that has been confirmed by South Sudan's Riek Machar. Nor would he confirm that the ICC has received a complaint from Raila Odinga's ODM in Kenya. He said that attempts continue to arrest the two Sudanese indictees. Whether and how the UN Secretariat is actually raising that issue to Sudan is not clear. But the day's arrest are worth noting, for international criminal justice.

And see, www.innercitypress.com/icc1ituri020708.html

At the UN, Ban's African Meeting Is Less than Transparent, Whilte Measurable Results Remain to Be Seen, "Now Is Not the Time"

Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at UN
www.innercitypress.com/ban2africa010808.html

UNITED NATIONS, January 8 -- Ban Ki-moon on Tuesday met with African ambassadors in a UN conference room. Hours before the meeting, it was said that Ban's opening remarks would be televised. Then this position was reversed, and the meeting declared closed. Inner City Press asked Mr. Ban on his way into the meeting, "What about the Office of the Special Advisor on Africa?" There was controversy in 2007 when Ban sought to consolidate this office and not appoint an African Under-Secretary-General to replace Legwaila Joseph Legwaila. (The UN's web site still lists him in place, though he left in April 2007). Ban started to answer the question, then was cut off by an aide, who another member of Ban's entourage identified as Yeocheol Yoon. "This is not the time," he said.

African Ambassadors interviewed by Inner City Press expressed some frustration at the meeting. "He spoke about climate change and other generalities," one Ambassador told Inner City Press. "When we asked him to set up a system where we can judge, at the end of the year, if he has done anything for Africa, he had no response." Given the mantra about results, this seems strange. After the meeting, Ban left surrounded by advisors, all of them smiling but providing no read-out. The decision to at the last minute cancel public access to Ban's remarks was made, sources tell Inner City Press, by "Ban's speechwriters." One wonders about the Secretariat's communications strategy.

Even getting basic answers that the UN should know is difficult. At Tuesday's noon briefing, on Africa, Inner City Press asked for UN response to the Ugandan military's statement that the UN has agreed to "flush out" Lord's Resistance Army leader Joseph Kony from Garamba Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The spokesperson didn't know, or wouldn't say. DRC envoy William Lacy Swing was still in the game, attending the meetings in Goma. Where then is his replacement Alan Doss, due in early January? The transition, Inner City Press was subsequently told, will happen by the end of the month. Click here for Inner City Press's article today on the UN backtracking on providing a briefing about its $250 million no-bid contract with Lockheed Martin, and the contract's proponent Jane Holl Lute's reported attempts to get George Clooney into Darfur.

And see, www.innercitypress.com/ban2africa010808.html