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On Somalia, Security Council Denies African Union Position, Calling It a Mere Point of View, Disagreements on Darfur
Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at the UN
UNITED NATIONS, December 27 -- When is a communique not a communique?
Tuesday in the UN Security Council, meeting about the crisis in Somalia, a number of council members said they would follow the position of the African Union, IGAG and the Arab League, which were slated to meet overnight. For example, Ghana's Ambassador Nanna said, "I am an African, I will follow what the African Union does." The Council meeting broke up Tuesday night without taking any action, leading some to question whether the Council, or the most powerful members on it, were just dallying so that Ethiopia could "finish the job" on the Islamic Courts, as both outgoing Secretary-General Kofi Annan and U.S. Ambassador Alejandro Wolff were asked. Here's video of Annan; Video of Wolff.
Overnight, as reported by BBC, the AU, IGAD and Arab League issued a communique calling for the removal of Ethiopian troops. But after the Council again took no action on Somalia on Wednesday, Inner City Press asked Ghana's Nanna what happened, what about the AU communiqué?
"Which communique?" Amb. Nanna asked.
The one calling on Ethiopia to withdraw its troops from Somalia.
"Oh really. We saw that communiqué, but some of us had questions about it."
Back at the Security Council stakeout, Inner City Press asked the representative of Qatar if any of the other Council members had questioned the authenticity of the joint communiqué.
"I wouldn't not like to comment on that," Qatar's representative said. Similarly, the Ambassador of Sudan, major AU member, said he would not take any questions about Somalia.
The BBC's story about the communique quotes African Union chairman Alpha Oumar Konare. The BBC has not run any retraction. Finally Inner City Press asked the charge d'affaires of the Baidoa-based Transitional Federal Government of Somalia if it was his position that the AU / IGAD / Arab League communiqué was somehow illegitimate. The response began with obligatory praise for the leaders of each group, including Mr. Konare, as well as of the OIC. Then this statement: "I have seen that communique. It is the point of voice of the three organizations. It is not the point of view of the member states."
And so, again: when is a communique not a communique? What powers are delegated to the leadership of inter-governmental organizations like the AU, IGAD and Arab League to take positions during a fast-breaking emergency? Or could it be, in fact, that the Tuesday statements about following whatever position the AU and Arab League would take were just a fig leaf, only true if they adopted a "don't-name-Ethiopia" position?
Inner City Press asked U.S. Amb. Wolff about the AU communique, and about President Bush' reported call to Uganda's Museveni. Amb. Wolff said he had not information to divulge on the latter, and did not answer the former. Video here.
On the sidelines of the Council stakeout, a US official portrayed Qatar as alone in demanding language about all foreign forces leaving Somalia. Another Deputy Ambassador of a Permanent Five country, asked if the split was 14-1, made reference to "a sizeable majority of the Council." Qatar's representative, on camera, said it had not been 14 to 1. He was seen in heated discussions with the Ambassador of Republic of Congo, just outside the Council chamber. Argentina's Ambassador Cesar Mayoral said he hoped this would be the last Council meeting of the year. But what about Somali civilians?
On Sudan, Kofi Annan came to the Security Council at 3:30 p.m. on Wednesday, and stayed in the Council for more than two hours. The topic was the December 23 letter than Sudan's president Al-Bashir had sent to him. Hedi Annabi went in, Ibrahim Gambari came out. Finally Mr. Annan came out and declared the letter an accomplishment. After Annan left, Sudan's Ambassador denied virtually everything in the letter. Combined with the Council's open diss of the AU's chairman Konare, thinks do not look good for Darfurians.
In the same spot, Annan had taken a few questions, all about diplomacy and where he'll be for New Year's Eve. He had mentioned Afghanistan as a "victory" of the Council and UN, but declined to take a shouted question about Pakistan's just announced policy of planting land mines on its border with Afghanistan, as a flesh-tearing argument that it is cracking down on insurgents. The Annan administration's top duo's last minute deletion from their post-employment restrictions policy, now no longer prohibiting senior ex-officials from lobbying the UN, again went unexplained. No questions were asked about the just-filed Oil for Food class action lawsuit by citizens of Iraq against BNP Paribas and the Australian Wheat Board. UNDP has been asked about its Somali operations, without response as yet. It would be bad form, apparently, to ask any questions about how the UN is run. To the next Secretary-General, then. Here's to 2007.
Fraud in UNDP-Russia Includes Malloch Brown's French Water Scheme and Kalman Mizsei's Excess
Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at the UN
UNITED NATIONS, December 26 -- The fraud in the Russian Federation office of the UN Development Program, blamed on local employees and a mid-level Bulgarian supervisor, may also trace to the very top of UNDP, an ongoing inquiry has found.
The most recent public audit of UNDP, A/61/5/Add.1, cites but does not fully disclose the fraud at the Russia office. Irregularities in UNDP's Russia operations date back at least to 2000, to a controversial water purification project championed by then-incoming UNDP Administrator Mark Malloch Brown. Subsequently the regional director whom Malloch Brown chose, Kalman Mizsei, used the Russia office as a slush fund for personal expenses, while bragging about flying on George Soros' personal plane.
Those disciplined by UNDP, including Stefan Vassilev, now with the Bulgarian military, and Tatiana Gorlatch, required to cover-up for Mr. Mizsei's excesses, may have taken some blame more appropriately apportioned to those above them in the UNDP hierarchy. This is the story of an agency out of control, rarely scrutinized by the press, jealous and abusing of its ever-growing power.
Mark Malloch Brown took over at UNDP in 1999. One of his first moves was to fire three regional directors, including Africa's Thelma Awori and Europe and CIS States' Anton Kruiderink. The latter's replacement, appointed by Mark Malloch Brown, was Kalman Mizsei, who was then with insurance conglomerate AIG and who identifies himself as a close associate of George Soros (a status shared with Mr. Malloch Brown).
Malloch Brown claimed he would bring financial sophistication to what he portrayed as a sleeping UNDP. As quoted in a book he paid over $500,000 to have published, Malloch Brown decided that too few UNDP country offices had "sustainable business models," something he sought to change with so-called "cost-sharing projects" of the type into which UNDP's Latin America Bureau first veered ("UNDP: A Better Way?", pages 299, 295.)
A major initial project was in Russia, where UNDP arranged to be a middleman for a water purification project in St. Petersburg. In fact, the project was financed by and to be carried out by a private company, the French firm SNF Floerger. After misidentifying the beneficiary as Sanofi SA, Malloch Brown told Reuters that UNDP saw its new "role in piloting the project through local red tape." Click here for that Reuters June 18, 2000, article.
Virtually all of the $90 million cost was equipment. UNDP sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to fear of retaliation, state that UNDP's role was to help the company evade or avoid paying taxed on importing the equipment. Running UNDP's Russia office at the time was one Philippe Elghouayel. In a UNDP newsletter replete with photos of himself, Malloch Brown called the arrangement "an example of UNDP’s increasing efforts to foster public-private partnerships." Click here for a copy of that UNDP newsletter.
In this scheme, UNDP would charge money to cut through "local red tape." UNDP sources indicate that concern and amazement at this Russian financial scheme and "cost sharing agreement" was widespread within the agency. UNDP would collect a hefty fee for playing the middle-man in a project regarding which is had little technical expertise, in which is role was little more than vehicle for tax evasion. One close observer of the project asked, "This is UNDP's definition of development?" But this is what UNDP has become, at least in some places and parts.
In fairness, others in UNDP argue that the water purification proposal was far from the most outlandish project of the Russia office. They argue that clean water was needed, and that while UNDP's role was that of a middleman, along with Credit Lyonnais Bank, the goal was more to limit the ten to fifteen percent usually required in bribes than to evade taxes. A variety of even less meritorious project have been pointed out, on which we hope to run future reports, not only the Moscow planetarium but also schemes with Russian prisons, social services, oil and environmental matters -- more on UNDP and the environment, and on UNDP's Russia and CIS operations, in the near future.
For barely two years, Frederick Lyons ran the Russian office, until as previously reported a Bulgarian, Stephan Vassilev, was sent to force him out. (Mr. Lyons went on to UNDP in Iran and then Afghanistan.) There are conflicting accounts of Mr. Vassilev, ranging from as the re-establisher of corrupt tied who forced Lyons to grant approval to a dubious project to renovate the Moscow planetarium to, on the other end of the spectrum, relatively upright militarist who might have let corruption continue, but would not have started it. Even if his motives may have been less than pure, Mr. Vassilev was deployed and used by a Malloch Brown-selected regional supervisor, Kalman Mizsei.
Mizsei was, until three months ago, the head of Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States for UNDP. Mark Malloch Brown brought Mizsei, which whom he shares connections to George Soros, into UNDP from the American Insurance Group in late 2000. As described by multiple sources inside and outside of UNDP, Mr. Mizsei was at best a womanizer and more widely described as a serial sexual harasser. Mizsei imported a personal assistant, whom he quickly promoted through the system until she reached her peak in the UNDP office in Ukraine. This individual would, sources say, show up at high level staff meetings and berate Mizsei "like a lover would," a person attending the meeting says. Other female staffers he "hit on" by suggesting they water the flowers at his residence, or bring him UNDP papers, personally, on the weekend.
Kalman Mizsei also abused UNDP and its finances. For example he took a lengthy "study tour" of Russia, all paid by UNDP. There was no academic sponsor for the trip, which consisted of visiting museum with personal guide and translator, paid by UNDP. Mark Malloch Brown was responsible for signing off on these expenses. The number and length of Kalman Mizsei's UNDP-paid visits to Ukraine raised eyebrows in the agency, although often pretexts were found. Click here for UNDP photos of Mizsei's April 2006 sojourn in Ukraine to, among other things, kick off the UN Global Compact with corporations there. Click here for another Mizsei trip to Ukraine, this time for a "mini-Davos" conference. Click here for UNDP in-house news of Mizsei and Ben Slay in Zagreb, Croatia. Click here for news of Mizsei partnering the UN with Coca-Cola. There are other legends about Kalman Mizsei charging UNDP for unneeded helicopter rides over the Balkans, and throwing a cell phone at staffers while screaming, "I demand a woman!"
In the course of his many travels, Kalman Mizsei instructed staff how he needed to be treated: a hotel no more than a twenty minute walk from the work place, flowers when he arrived, and, perhaps incongruously, that no required drinking take place in formal or informal functions (sometimes difficult given the region that he covered).
Sources tell Inner City Press that Kalman Mizsei required that these unjustifiable expenses come out of project budgets in the Russia office. At first it was easy, to find long-finished projects with still open budgets. But later, to meet the costs, full-fledged fraud became required. The replacement as head of the office of Frederick Lyons by Stephan Vassilev was, sources say, orchestrated by Kalman Mizsei, either for Mr. Vassilev to perform a cover-up or to become the scapegoat.
Inner City Press asked UNDP's Communications Office about the Russia office, and also about Kalman Mizsei. Each response increasingly seems like a whitewash:
In a message dated 11/30/2006 11:29:56 AM Eastern Standard Time, cassandra.waldon [at] undp.org writes:
Matthew, Below are the responses to your questions:
Question: Was Kalman Mizsei fired or otherwise relieved or removed from his position with UNDP? If so, on what grounds?
Response: No. As stated previously, at UNDP -- like at other organizations -- with time colleagues retire, move on or are reassigned. After serving six distinguished years at UNDP, Mr. Miszei is now Professor at Central European University's Department of Public Policy in Budapest.
Kalman Mizsei left UNDP in the Fall of 2006. Despite Mark Malloch Brown's refusal to comment, sources tell Inner City Press that Mizsei's antics became so legend, and the fall-out so undeniable, that even Malloch Brown chastised Mizsei. Kalman Mizsei was given a choice: to leave UNDP voluntarily, or to stay but face charges. Mizsei chose the former, and from Hungary has sent emails bragging that he is now a personal advisor to George Soros.
Despite the Office of the Spokesman for the Secretary-General's refusal to comment on Inner City Press' questions about Kalman Mizsei, most recently at the noon briefings of December 1 and December 6, it is noted that Mr. Mizsei was given that very rostrum, as a UN Assistant Secretary General, on April 30, 2004, click here for the Real video, from Minute 13, for six minutes of eyeglasses playing and ironic reference to human trafficking of sex workers and no follow-up questions, click here for the transcript. On the issue of UN rank, UNDP sources say that Kalman Mizsei repeatedly and inaccurately declared that he was an Under-Secretary General. In any event, he represented the UN, and the UN should answer for him; UNDP refuses to.
UNDP's Communications Office has said it will not comment on recruitment, hiring or promotions issues, and will not released audits like that of the Russian Federation office. (Nor will it release a full copy of that audit even to the nations on the UNDP Executive Board.) Mark Malloch Brown, when Inner City Press previously requested comment from him, responded with the word "jerk," click here for that story, in the spirit of full disclosure. Last week, Inner City Press was told it would not be possible to get a comment on reports that Mr. Malloch Brown was responsible for weakening the post-employment policy finalized on December 22, his last day in the office. Therefore this story runs as such, citing, for UNDP, its most recent public audit and long-delayed narrative response.
The most recent public audit of UNDP, A/61/5/Add.1, states
"Potential fraud had been detected at the Russian Federation office and reported to it for further investigation. The Office of Audit and Performance Review performed an investigation and released its report on 6 December, 2005. This report concluded that one payment amounting to $190,000 was fraudulent. Additional payments that could be fraudulent were under further investigation."
An article entitled "$1.2 million fraud revealed at the U.N. Office in Moscow," in Kommersant, No 163, page 9, quoted UNDP's then-spokesman William Orme that "this appears to be a sophisticated operation that has been difficult to detect. Unfortunately, we detected it only this year." The irregularities of the water purification / tax avoidance scheme dated back much further, however, as did Kalman Mizsei's use of the office. Given the reference to an OAPR report being "released" on Dec. 6, 2005, Inner City Press asked UNDP for this report. UNDP has refused to provide it, but after some delay provided a narrative, which Inner City Press published in full, stating in pertinent part:
"When the extent of the fraud became evident, Mr. Vassilev was summoned to headquarters. He was removed from his post in August 2005 and subjected to disciplinary proceedings stemming from shortcomings in management performance and oversight. Mr. Vassilev is no longer employed by UNDP... UNDP has assigned some of its most experienced staff to the Russia CO. Ercan Murat, a UNDP veteran who had served previously as Resident Representative in Azerbaijan, the Kyrgyz Republic, and Afghanistan, came out of retirement to serve as acting Resident Representative in Russia from September 2005 until September 2006. Marco Borsotti, who currently serves as UNDP Resident Representative in Azerbaijan, has received clearance from the Russian Government and is expected to take up his post as the new Resident Representative in January 2007."
Ironically, of Mr. Murat it is reported that while unlike Kalman Mizsei he is not abusive of staff, his brother engaged in business deals in UNDP's Central Asia footprint that generated some controversy within the agency. Of Mr. Borsotti, we hope to have more in the near future -- UNDP's agreement with Russia specifying the procedures and standards to received the above-referenced "clearance" was requested more than ten days ago from UNDP, but has yet to be provided.
Stephan Vassilev returned to the Bulgarian military. Ms. Gorlatch, who was embroiled in a drag-out divorce and child custody fight with an affluent diplomat, may have reasons to stay silent. But given UNDP's refusal to even respond to questions about its recruitment, hiring and promotion practices, or to release audits of the Russian office, Inner City Press runs this interim investigative piece. Again, there are serious people who are arguing that the St. Petersburg water purification proposal was far from the most outlandish UNDP project. A variety of even less meritorious project have been pointed out, including schemes with prisons, social services, oil and environmental matters -- more on UNDP and the environment in the near future. Watch this site.
At the UN, Mysterious Deletion from Iran Sanctions List of Aerospace Industries Organization Goes Unexplained
Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at the UN
UNITED NATIONS, December 23, 1:50 p.m. -- Minutes before the UN Security Council voted 15-0 to impose sanctions on Iran on nuclear issues, a spokesperson emerged from the Chamber and breathlessly told reporters of a particular company which got deleted from the sanctions list at the last moment. Aerospace Industries Organization, listed in previous drafts under "Entities involved in the ballistic missile program," was suddenly taken off the list. A Security Council source, representing a Permanent Five, veto-wielding member, confirmed to Inner City Press that Russia had demanded the deletion of this company.
After the vote, Inner City Press asked the European Union Three ambassadors to explain the deletion. French Ambassador de la Sabliere said it came out as part of the negotiation, in order to get the resolution passed. UK Ambassador Emyr Jones Parry pointed out that three subsidiaries of AIO remain on the list. But why then remove the parent company? What do the other subsidiaries of AIO do?
EU3
leave AIO deletion unexplained
Inner City Press asked U.S. Ambassador Alejandro Wolff to explain the effect of deleting AIO from the list. Ask other members, Amb. Wolff suggested. Next up was Russian Ambassador Churkin. Inner City Press asked, specifically, what the other subsidiaries of AIO do. Amb. Churkin stated that "the sponsors" of the resolution took AIO's name off the list, and when press about what the other subsidiaries of AIO do, stated, "I am not an expert on these matters." But why then demand that the name come off the sanctions list?
Since, as previously reported, the U.S. used online research to compose the sanctions list, here are two top online references to the "Aerospace Industries Organisation" --
From irandefence.net, as a "subsidiary of Iran's Ministry of Defense" -- "The Aerospace Industries Organisation, a subsidiary of Iran's Ministry of Defence, claims to support the manufacturing process by engaging in 'Scud missile restoration'.
From warshipsifr.com, as the manufacturer of "an anti-ship missile named 'Kosar'" -- "recently Iran's Aerospace Industries Organisation revealed it had manufactured an anti-ship missile named 'Kosar.'"
So why would it be so important to Russia to continue being able to do business with this conglomerate, other than three subsidiaries? The three "subordinate entities of AIO" which remained on the sanctions list as enacted are:
Shahid Hemmat Industrial Group -- reportedly has contracted in the past with Russian Central Aerohydrodynamic Institute (TsAGI) and Rosvoorouzhenie;
Shahid Bagheri Industrial Group -- reportedly has contracted with Russia's Baltic State Technical University and the China North Industries Corporation (NORINCO); and
Fajr Industrial Group, formerly Instrumentation Factory Plant -- which has been linked, interestingly, with KBR / Halliburton, click here for more.
To be continued.
In other Saturday Security Council action, a resolution on the protection of journalists in armed conflicts was enacted, and then announced to reporters by the Ambassador of Greece. Inner City Press asked how armed conflict is defined -- specifically, if the definition would include situations like Chechnya, and murders of reporters like that of Anna Politkovskaya. The Greek Ambassador turned quickly away from the microphone. Like the question, repeatedly asked, about the double-standard of cracking down on some countries' nuclear programs and not others, some issues are just not discussed at the UN Security Council. But if an alleged nuclear proliferators is included on a sanctions list and then at the last moment is deleted, it should we think be explained.
At the UN, Security Council and GA Games and Holiday Spirit As Revolving Door Ban Disappears on Final Day
Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at the UN
UNITED NATIONS, December 22 -- On the Friday before Christmas, when the General Assembly went deep into the night and the Security Council deferred for one more day a much watered-down resolution on Iran, Kofi Annan's spokesman Stephane Dujarric held what he's called his last press conference. Coincidentally, or not, the long awaited, much-hyped anti-revolving door policy was to be announced. The briefing was begun by Mark Malloch Brown, who praised Stephane Dujarric and then prepared to go. What -- no questions? Well, no. No questions taken at all.
In his opening presentation, Mr. Dujarric mentioned the new post-employment restrictions. Inner City Press asked him to confirm that there had been a stronger draft, which would have precluded senior UN officials, not only those in procurement, from lobbying the UN for two years after leaving. Mr. Dujarric declined to comment on prior drafts, or who made the weakening change -- that individual had just left the room.
The earlier draft, dated June 12, 2006, provided that
"Former staff members at the Assistant Secretary-General level or above are prohibited from making, with the intent to influence, a communication to or appearance before any staff member of the United Nations, regardless of level... This prohibition is effective for two years."
This provision is entirely missing from the finalized policy, which is limited to "staff members participating in the procurement process." All of the Assistant Secretaries-General, and the Deputy Secretary General, were given a Christmas present three days early: the ability to lobby the UN during the next two years. The DSG will, at least initially, be based at Yale University. But the lobbying will have to be watched, particularly in light of the opaque process by which the initial prohibition was removed.
Later on Friday, a UN official gave some rationale for dropping the prohibitions on senior officials, giving rise to a drier, stand-alone story, click here to view.
The mood in the UN briefing room on Friday was like a professor's last day. The journalists, not dissimilar to a school class in a hothouse, thanked Stephane in turn. Reuters regretted being third to AP and Bloomberg -- "as per usual," Bloomberg jibed -- and a wise and wizened Anatolian reporter wished the half-French Steph "bonne chance." Inner City Press said, and meant, "It was a pleasure," a statement that was reciprocated. Then Inner City Press asked about human rights in Zimbabwe, a topic left unaddressed in Kofi Annan's ten years. What about Mugabe's refusal to honor the extradition request for Marian Mengistu?
"The Secretary-General is against impunity," Stephane said, and meant it. But what does it mean? Peter Karim, who held UN peacekeepers hostage, was given a MONUC-brokered position in the Congolese Army. Joseph Kony of Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army, although indicted by the International Criminal Court, meets with Mr. Annan's humanitarian envoy and is not close to begin arrested. We are all against impunity. And yet it continues.
Overnight full copies of Paul Volcker's report on UN Oil for Food appeared in the hall outside the UN Spokesman's office. Seven volumes, more fifteen pounds, fine reading for the holiday season.
But the holiday has yet to being, at the UN. The Security Council scheduled Saturday meetings on Iran and journalists and armed conflict. The GA left until 10 then 11 p.m. it's rubber-stamp approval of committees' reports, including the Capital Master Plan. The funding of investigation of Qana caused much consternation, with the U.S., Israel, Palau and the Marshall Islands voting negative. Where, one asked, was Ivory Coast? Doesn't Gbagbo want the U.S. vote in the Council?
They droned on in the GA: the Fifth Committee adopted this resolution without a vote. May I take it the General Assembly wished to do the same? (A beat.) It is so decided. And then the swinging of the ceremonial gavel we saw given to Jan Eliason.
From the Security Council itself, it can now be reported: China delayed the resolution continuing diamond sanction on Liberia because of a specific Taiwan issue. To whit, in Brussels a bureaucrat had floated the idea of upgrading Taiwan from observer status in the (blood diamond) Kimberly process. China was so opposed to this it said it would not vote to continue diamond sanctions on Liberia unless the Brussels wonk recanted. And so it was done. In consultations, issues are traded away and it rarely gets reported. Other examples, to be more fully explored in 2007 are Ivory Coast and Abkhazia, and, we predict, Kosovo.
Also noted in the week's vote counts is Ivory Coast joining the U.S. and Palau in opposing resolutions. Gbagbo knows which side his bread is buttered on. And he and his wife Simone prepare, it is reported, to throw UN envoy Pierre Schori out of the country.
In this last week of Security Council action for 2006, several lesser-noticed resolutions are indicative of the Council's flaws. While the Council finally enacted a purported "de-listing" procedure whereby individuals and entities on which the Council has imposed sanctions can try to get off the list, the regime makes a mockery of due process. Instead of providing standards of proof and rules of procedure, it's again a popularity contest and political football. Without the support of (key) Council members, there'll be no de-listing. Pomp and circumstances, a kangaroo court on the west bank of New York's East River, at least as regards the claims of those put on sanctions lists.
But it is not only a hall of mirrors, our Turtle Bay idyll. As night fell on the second shortest day, the Spokesman's office threw its end-of-year, end-of-term party. The food was chips, the drink red wine and scotch. But the stories were, as the credit card ad has it, priceless. Mojitos and cigars on beaches with ambassadors of Brazil, chefs de cabinet decamping to Mexico for a few days. Why, one asked, does Russia get so few top posts? The USSR used to pay eight percent of the budget, and now barely over one percent, comes the answer. And soon after the party, the GA was to meet, on the dry but crucial scale of assessments. We are family.
Kofi Annan himself will be at an undisclosed location in New York for the rest of his term, "available if needed," he's said. There's continued suffering in Darfur, accelerating war in Somalia and, as decried in a little-noticed UN press release, increased abductions of school children in Haiti. We'll have more on and around this last in the near future.
UNDP's Ad Melkert Says He Will Finally Increase Transparency, Describes Fraud in Russia, Dodges Uganda
Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at the UN - 14th in a series Intro followed by 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th, 13th
UNITED NATIONS, December 15 -- "I'd like to bring our transparency in line with the UN procedure", the Associate Administrator of the UN Development Program, Ad Melkert, answered Inner City Press on Friday. This answer came after UNDP had refused to provide copies or even summaries of audits of its admittedly troubled Russian Federation office, and after Inner City Press pointed out that the UN Secretariat at least provides full copies to any of the 192 member states which make a request. Mr. Melkert added, "That should be normal... Talking about transparency, the best criteria for me is my own transparency.. I'm looking into that right now." Video here, from Minute 45:46.
Inner City Press inquired into a meeting Mr. Melkert held on December 1 with the staff of UNDP's Poverty Group, concerning steps taken to quickly bring Jeffrey Sachs' team from the UN Millennium Group onto the UNDP payroll. Having just referred to transparency, Mr. Melkert nevertheless began with the "hope you are not going to ask me about all the meeting that I've had." He continued that "for this exception case, yes, this First December meeting, I was... It was a managerial decision to merge, it's my responsibility, everybody can and should work with that. With respect to staff rules, we have tried to make the best out of that." While confirming much of what Inner City Press sources have said about the meeting, Mr. Melkert denied that he has told staff not to speak to the press. Time will tell.
Mr. Melkert claimed that UNDP never funded disarmament in Uganda, only "community development." Rather than naming Karamoja, the region in Eastern Uganda in which the program was funded, Mr. Melkert apparently confused it with the Lord's Resistance Army-impacted area he called "Northern Uganda," where he said it is "hard to distinguish from the situation of risk and potential conflict including the roles weapons play." Video here, from Minute 36:25. But William Orme, previously of UNDP's Communications Office, said earlier in the year there was a voluntary disarmament component, and UNDP in Uganda issued a press release announcing the suspension of funding. When the seeming dissembling spreads to the Number Two in the agency, the plot thickens. What will the often invisible Number One, Kemal Dervis, have to say? While his December 18 appearance has been cancelled, Inner City Press was again told on Friday that he will appear on December 21. He can be expected to be asked to spell out UNDP's plan for greater transparency, among other things.
Perhaps as a forerunner of the increased transparency needed at UNDP, hopefully as a sample of the type of response that will come regarding other scandals and locales inquired into, the following was provided to Inner City Press in response to questions:
Subject: UNDP responses
From: cassandra.waldon [at] undp.org
To: Inner City Press
"On UNDP's Russia office: Three Resident Representatives have headed the UNDP Country Office (CO) in the Russian Federation since it began operations in 1997. Philippe Elghouayel served from August 1997 until January 2001. Frederick Lyons served from March 2001 until April 2003. Stefan Vassilev served as acting Resident Representative from April until June 2003, and then as Resident Representative from September 2003 until August 2005.
A full internal UNDP audit of the Russia Country Office was conducted in August 2001. This cited numerous shortcomings and gave the CO an overall rating of "deficient." A follow-up partial audit was conducted in September 2003. This noted improvement in many areas and issued a rating of "partially satisfactory."
The discovery of suspected fraudulent activity triggered an internal investigation in June 2005. This investigation concluded that one payment amounting to $190,000 was fraudulent. Additional payments that could be fraudulent were under investigation. Three former UNDP staff members, all locally employed Russian nationals, were implicated in the fraud. All three resigned from the Country Office before the investigation was launched.
When the extent of the fraud became evident, Mr. Vassilev was summoned to headquarters. He was removed from his post in August 2005 and subjected to disciplinary proceedings stemming from shortcomings in management performance and oversight. Mr. Vassilev is no longer employed by UNDP.
In September 2005, drawing on the evidence collected in the investigation, the UNDP Administrator made an official request to Russian law enforcement authorities to open a criminal investigation into the fraud. Such an investigation was opened by the Moscow Prosecutor and is currently under way, with UNDP's active cooperation.
UNDP informed its Executive Board of the fraud, as part of its regular reporting processes. In the wake of the special audit and rigorous internal reviews, UNDP has undertaken a painstaking restructuring of its finance operations and management structure, enacting the recommendations both of UNDP auditors and of a regular UN Board of Auditors audit conducted early in 2006. In addition, oversight roles and functions have been carefully reviewed at Headquarters, and fresh efforts have been devoted to ensuring that audit recommendations are heeded.
To support these corrective efforts, UNDP has assigned some of its most experienced staff to the Russia CO. Ercan Murat, a UNDP veteran who had served previously as Resident Representative in Azerbaijan, the Kyrgyz Republic, and Afghanistan, came out of retirement to serve as acting Resident Representative in Russia from September 2005 until September 2006. Marco Borsotti, who currently serves as UNDP Resident Representative in Azerbaijan, has received clearance from the Russian Government and is expected to take up his post as the new Resident Representative in January 2007.
The effectiveness of UNDP's corrective measures was recently confirmed through an independent external review which judged the management practices of the Russia CO to be fundamentally sound and in line with UNDP regulations and standards."
There. Some of the things not yet addressed are the Brussels funding for the Moscow planetarium project, as well as the other requested audits concerning Honduras, Afghanistan and the Private Sector Unit of the Bureau of Resources and Strategic Partnerships. There is also the reference to "receiv[ing] clearance from the Russian Government," more on which anon.
In fairness, on Thursday evening UNDP sent Inner City Press among other things this denial:
---Original
Message-----
Subject: UNDP responses
From: cassandra.waldon [at] undp.org
To: Inner City
Press
Sent: Thu, 14 Dec 2006 7:00 PM
"Dear Matthew, regarding the allegations relating to the Bratislava Regional Centre... Ben Slay has not collected any improper daily sustenance allowance at any time. We find no suggestion that his predecessor did, either, but because his tenure ended some time ago, we are pulling additional records out of storage to confirm this. The Vienna office you appear to be making reference to opened before Ben Slay even arrived as Director of the Bratislava Centre. Ben Slay sometimes works from the Vienna office. He does not collect DSA for doing so. "
Sources in Bratislava indicate that the individual opened a small UNPD office in Vienna, then sought to recruit other UNDP officials in Slovakia to relocate to Vienna, "to make his move look less strange." When an investigation into UNDP-Bratislava and the antics of Kalman Mizsei began, the individual hurriedly moved back to Slovakia...
Again, because a number of Inner City Press' UNDP sources go out of their way to express commitment to serving the poor, and while it should be unnecessary, Inner City Press is compelled to conclude this installment in a necessarily-ongoing series by saluting the stated goals of UNDP and many of its staff. As they used to say on TV game shows, keep those cards, letters and emails coming, and phone calls too, we apologize for any phone tag, but please continue trying, and keep the information flowing.
UNDP Questions Mount, Mark Malloch Brown Calls Them Irresponsible, Answers Only in Vanity Press
Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at the UN
UNITED NATIONS, Dec. 4, lightly edited Dec. 7 -- As additional information arrives in the wake of last week's sudden re-assignment of Brian Gleeson, the head of the UN Development Program's Office of Human Resources, Inner City Press on Monday morning sought comment from Deputy Secretary-General Mark Malloch Brown, previously the Administrator of UNDP. It is reported by staff that Mr. Gleeson repeatedly invoked Mr. Malloch Brown's name to justify what he called his best practices policies, and stated that Mr. Malloch Brown was going to make him head of the UN Secretariat's Office of Human Resources and Management.
In the wide hallway between the UN General Assembly and Security Council, Inner City Press approached Mark Malloch Brown with a series of questions, beginning with a request for comment on the re-assignment of Brian Gleeson.
Mr. Malloch Brown replied, "You are a jerk. You are the most irresponsible journalist I've come across." And then he walked away.
Inner City Press called after him that there were other questions. Many are contained in the first four installment of this ongoing UNDP series. An additional question, regarding favoritism and entitlement, involved the use not only of UNDP but also of UNFPA, to dole out to a Malloch Brown ally a job in Turkey, sources tell Inner City Press, when the MMB ally's spouse had a UNDP job in Turkey. Numerous staff members have come forward with complaints of favoritism, abuse and threats of retaliation. If Mr. Malloch Brown is right, perhaps they are all irresponsible jerks. But perhaps Mr. Malloch Brown is not right.
Another question, which Inner City Press raised Friday to the Secretariat's Office of the Spokesman as well as to UNDP, is how Mark Malloch Brown decided to commission the recent book, "UNDP: A Better Way?" The book's author, Craig N. Murphy thanks as his first acknowledgement "Mark Malloch Brown, who hired me to write this history. He offered the unbeatable combination of... a good salary and travel budget."
Mr. Malloch Brown having declined, at 10:44 a.m., to take questions, Inner City Press at noon reiterated the question to the Secretariat's spokesman: how did Malloch Brown decide to have this glowing history writing, how was the author selected and how much was he paid? Was he paid from UNDP core funds? Beyond the still-unspecified "good salary" paid to the author, UNDP retained the copyright. The book, perhaps not surprisingly, effusively praises Mr. Malloch Brown. It is reminiscent, to one UN-immersed reader, of the "Great Book" of Turkmenbashi, the President for Life of Turkmenistan, a volume known as Ruhnama.
From the field, UNDP Resident Representatives have over the weekend written to Inner City Press with congratulations for its series on UNDP, which began with a November 29 report on the reassignment of Brian Gleeson. In that report, Inner City Press noted that there were competing theories for Gleeson having been told to resign. More specific information has arrived, that while UNDP is authorized to have some 65 officials at the D-2 level, a recent check found more than 110 officials received D-2 payments and perks. This played a role, as it would in nearly any other organization, in making a change at the top of the Office of Human Resources.
Additionally, a letter to a funder nation, purportedly dated November 4 and giving a seven- to ten-day window to respond, was delivered to the nation's representatives after the deadline, a snafu also cited in the re-assignment of Mr. Gleeson.
[Paragraph excised, see Note below.]
It is reported that Mr. Malloch Brown brought Brian Gleeson into UNDP as a consultant on efficiency, and that this later became a high (and high paying) job at UNDP. This is similar to the current process by which associates of Jeffrey Sachs are being put onto UNDP's payroll outside of UNDP's normal recruitment and hiring procedures.
As one specific example, for this mid-day report, Inner City Press is informed that Guido Schmidt-Traub, still listed on the web site of the UN Millennium Project, is already working at and paid by the UNDP Poverty Group. Meanwhile, sources tell Inner City Press, the post Mr. Schmidt-Traub has been given is still purportedly being advertised to create the appearance of a normal recruitment process. More on this in forthcoming reports. UNDP's Communications Office, along with Mr. Kemal Dervis, was asked about this on the morning of Friday, December 1, in written questions reference a deadline of later that day. On Monday the response has been that the questions will be answered sometime this coming week. To date, the candor of the responses, the delay and obfuscation, are not acceptable. Perhaps they are, to adopt a phrase from the hallway, irresponsible.
MMB
w/ FM of
Uganda (click
here for earlier
analysis of UNDP's role in ongoing violent disarmament)
Regarding Mr. Malloch Brown's impact on UNDP staff in Vietnam, again for example, the following arrived last week:
Subject: Update on Brian Gleeson Story, for Mr. Matthew Russell Lee
From: [Name withheld upon request]
To: matthew.lee [at] innercitypress.com
Sent: Fri, 1 Dec 2006 3:44 AM
Dear Mr. Matthew Russell Lee,
I write as Vietnamese staff member at UNDP Viet Nam. I wish remain anonymous to protect my job, but I feel is my duty to write you about other linkages with Mr. Brian Gleeson and high salary appointments by Senior Management in our Country Office.
The story on Mr. Brian Gleason is quite demoralizing for many UNDP staff who carry out their duties with honesty, integrity and fairness... our senior management approved a number of high paying international appointments without following required procedures and regulations of UNDP.
Many of us national staff know that former Resident Representative at UNDP Viet Nam Mr. Jordan Ryan (a close friend of Mr. Mark Malloch Brown) and the Deputy Resident Representative of Operations Mr. Neil Reece-Evans (a close friend of Mr. Brian Gleeson) collaborated to recruit through the "back door" an American friend from the past Mr. Jonathan Pincus at very high paying job in our office.
Mr. Brian Gleeson was informed but he choose to ignore. Mr. Jonathan Pincus then use similar procedure to hire his friends in the office and on projects. [Click here for more.]
[For the record: On Dec. 4, three days after this story was published, UNDP wrote that "Hiring at the Vietnam country office takes place according to standard UNDP procedures. Jonathan Pincus, a tenured professor at the University of London, was recruited in 2004 as Senior Country Economist in a transparent and competitive process. He was not previously known to any senior staff at the UNDP Vietnam Country Office. Dr. Pincus is a widely recognized expert in his area and has made substantial contributions to UNDP and the wider UN system’s work in Vietnam. With respect to the staff letter posted on your website, UNDP has been a leader in establishing channels through which staff can air their grievances or report misconduct without fear of retaliation. Among other measures, UNDP has put in place an anonymous fraud hotline and a mechanism to file complaints on sexual harassment and abuse of authority." And see Inner City Press's December 7 article, the eighth installment in this UNDP Series, also on Vietnam - click here to view.]
Regarding Kalman Mizsei, by many accounts chased out of UNDP earlier this year after multiple complaints of sexual harassment -- including having brought and hired young women from Central Europe and then applied inappropriate pressure -- it now appears that Mr. Malloch Brown was among those who heard or tolerated Mr. Mizsei's racialist rant in a taxi in South Africa in 2002. "Zero tolerance" for some and not for others, it appears.
The UNDP produced, Malloch Brown-commissioned book "UNDP: A Better Way?" refers, at 297, to the UN Millennium Project's "Jeffrey Sachs, the economist whom Malloch Brown had bought in." Given that Mr. Malloch Brown declined, at 10:44 a.m., to take questions, Inner City Press at noon asked this question of the spokeswoman for the president of the General Assembly, who'd been speaking about the Millennium Development Goals: what is the status of the UN Millennium Program, and how many if any of its staffers are being hired by UNDP and on what basis? If not from Mr. Malloch Brown and the Secretariat, and if only after already days-delay from UNDP, then from the General Assembly President's always professional spokeswoman, an answer should soon be forthcoming.
News analysis: When now outgoing U.S. Ambassador John Bolton called a Malloch Brown speech the most irresponsible act by the Secretariat he'd seen, Inner City Press asked Amb. Bolton to compare the speech to Rwanda. But hyperbole is not limited to one side of the debate. Among the UN press corps, even some supporters of Mr. Malloch Brown opine that the questions he faced about his living arrangement have left him too quick to conclude that any questioning or investigating of the UN must come from the far right (viz. his references to Fox News and Rush Limbaugh earlier this year.)
In 2005, Mr. Malloch Brown pointedly advised journalists to question their motives. But as seen for example with UNDP's attempt to cover-up that a disarmament program it funded in Uganda resulted in human rights abuses, trying to mislead, intimidate or insult the press doesn't help an institution nor its real-world constituents. As the UN's Jan Egeland again confirmed in agreeing to respond to Inner City Press' questions on Monday, the abuses in Eastern Uganda continue, with nary a word for example on UNDP's Uganda web site. On disarmament, UNDP's presumably non-irresponsible web site Uganda website still trumpets the government's round-up of guns in May 2006, reciting that "Mr. Cornelis Klein, outgoing UNDP Resident Representative, hailed the GoU for having taken a lead in the SALW [Small Arms and Light Weapons] program by, among others, establishing the Ugandan National Action Plan on SALW." Jan Egeland's response on Wednesday about Eastern Uganda's Karamoja region should go online here soon.
[Dec. 7 note - In the above, certain details have been removed so that there is less distraction from the subject of this series: the UN Development Program. According to the Secretariat's spokesman's December 7 lecture, these were the details which led to the December 4 comments of the Deputy Secretary-General, ex-Administrator of UNDP. While the paragraph now-missing above was only reported after Mr. Malloch Brown's comments, and therefore cannot have formed a basis for Brown's comments, they are excised in order to keep the focus on UNDP. Back to the substance - click here for a list of the most recent articles.]
As UN Speechifies, UNDP Audits Are Still Being Withheld, While War in Somalia and Sudan, Pronk Blogs On
Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at the UN - 9th in a series
UNITED NATIONS, December 8 at 6 pm, updated below -- With Kofi Annan's Special Representative Jan Pronk back in Sudan for what seems the final time, Annan's spokesman on Friday on noon continued deflecting and stonewalling requests for simple information about an ally of Mark Malloch Brown whom he had extensively defended the previous day. At five p.m. deadline UNDP informed Inner City Press by email that an audit of fraud in UNDP's Russia office, responsive to a December 1 request, would not be released. UNDP states that no such information, nor comments on allegations of violations of UN hiring practices rules, will be released.
Less than an hour later, Inner City Press found at the UN Spokesman's Office document counter a press release by UNDP, apparently placed there much earlier in the day, which makes a number of claims. Click here to view. Ironically, UNDP did not email a copy to Inner City Press, nor ask any question for comment prior to its "publication." UNDP tries to argue that individuals named in this series were not contacted prior to publication. In fact, Inner City Press called the direct lines of Brian Gleeson, Nora Lustig, Romesh Muttukumaru and others, as well as directly asking and attempt to ask questions of Kemal Dervis on Nov. 27 and Mark Malloch Brown on December 4.
Mr. Dervis, the head of a $5 billion UN Program, has not held a press conference in 14 months. There is more that will be said, while not deviating from the substance of this series on UNDP. This is merely an update a half-an-hour after seeing strangely UNDP's blind side press release, just before the festive annual ball of the UN Correspondents Association.
Earlier on Jan Pronk, the spokesman said he wasn't sure if he was actually in-country. If the Dutch press had it, one might think that the UN would know. The Number Two on story 38, however, is adverse or lacks knowledge about new media. He called workplace reporting about UNDP "irresponsible" and its purveyor a "jerk." Then his spokesman loyally sketched a scenario in which the "personal" material about Brian Gleeson would come down, and apology be offered. Click here for the transcript. The material came down, in the spirit of diplomacy, and the spokesman was so informed. Video here, at Minute 19:40. But the stonewalling continued.
Question: if at the direction of Mark Malloch Brown the spokesman is so quick to trash a journalist with whom he purports to joke, in robust defense of a friend of Mr. Brown, how can the spokesman the next day refuse to answer any question about the Malloch friend? It is hard to comprehend. Or it is the way that power work, in the late Annan-Brown regime. Everything's genteel until the wrong toes are trodden on. Then the gloves come off. The effect is to stonewall reporting on one of the UN's largest programs. Despite its annual budget of $5 billion, UNDP Administrator Kemal Dervis has been allowed to go 14 months without taking questions. Last week, after the UN ruled that even a ritual Memorandum of Understanding signing with the Islamic Development Bank couldn't be attended, an in-house photo came out.
Dervis with press kept at bay
Today Mr. Dervis is in Vietnam, and so we continue our reporting, from a UNDP volunteer there, an on-the-record source since UNDP cannot retaliate, at least not directly. Pierre De Hanscutter was a computer / IT volunteer with UNDP in Vietnam. He states that while there, he attended a meeting in which UNDP proposed to buy computer equipment and services, from a company managed by the Vietnamese military, TECAPRO, at costs up to 35 times the going rate. Pierre De Hanscutter has provided a document, click here to view [which for now is blocked out by UNDP's Dec. 8 press release]. For example, he says, the purchase of a wireless router for $3500, when it normally priced at $120. His immediate boss Bui Khanh Huong made these arrangement, and Pierre De Hanscutter states that neither the top guy, Neil Reece nor the middleman Koen Van Acoleyn did anything to stop it. Mr. Reece said only that it would be good if it could be 10% cheaper.
Pierre De Hanscutter's check of UNDP computer security found 15% of computers entirely unprotected, including that of the office's director. After raising the over-paying and other irregularities first to UNDP-Vietnam and then by letter to the UN in New York, Pierre De Hanscutter says he was told to no longer work in the office. Now outside the UNDP system, Pierre De Hanscutter has called for an investigation of UNDP in Vietnam, including its relation with TECAPRO. Is Kemal Dervis there to investigate? It doesn't sound like it. And so the questions mount, for his belated December 18 presser.
Along with two questions posed with a five o'clock deadline (to be further reported out and with the responses to follow in full), and December 6 questions not even responded to, here was a question posed, and the response:
"responsive to earlier still-unanswered question, please provide the investigative report on UNDP's Russian Federation office referred to in the paragraph below, which is in the most recent audit of UNDP, A/61/5/Add.1, at page 22:
"Potential fraud had been detected at the Russian Federation office and reported to it for further investigation. The Office of Audit and Performance Review performed an investigation and released its report on 6 December, 2005. This report concluded that one payment amounting to $190,000 was fraudulent. Additional payments that could be fraudulent were under further investigation. Two former UNDP staff members were implicated in the perpetration of those transactions (the former Assistant Resident Representative for Operations, who resigned on 20 April, 2005, and a former Project Administrator who resigned on 1 November, 2004). These cases were also reported by the Administrator of UNDP to the authorities of the Russian Federation on 15 September, 2005 for further action."
And please provide an update." On this the following arrived, twenty minutes after deadline, thus confined to later in this report:From: [CW at] undp.org
To: Inner City Press
Sent: Fri, 8 Dec 2006 5:20 PM
Subject: RE: deadline today 5 p.m.
...we are still working to provide you with a response to your 1 December question on our Russia Country Office (you asked about "any and all investigations undertaken in the past 10 years", not just about the 2005 investigation). In response to your above request for the 2005 investigation report, please note that we do not release the reports of our internal audits and investigations. The results of these reports, however, are communicated on an annual basis to the UNDP Executive Board in the form of an annual Administrator’s report on Internal Audit and Oversight (this is the longer document that contains the text you have pasted above). The reports of UNDP’s external auditors are available at http://www.unsystem.org/auditors/.
How convenient, this non-release of "the reports of [UNDP] internal audits and investigations." We'll have more on this shortly, including once at least some of the December 6 UNDP questions are answered.
Update of 7:25 p.m. -- More than six hours after UNDP published its naming-names press release, UNDP finally sent Inner City Press a copy, along with a reiteration of the above with a new promise to be even less transparent:
To: Inner City Press
cc: dujarric, et al. [at] un.org
Sent: Fri, 8 Dec 2006 7:13 PM
That we will no longer be responding to unsubstantiated allegations about UNDP’s recruitment and personnel practices. We urge you to desist from publishing such allegations, however, as doing so can harm the reputations and be personally hurtful to innocent colleagues. As previously communicated to you, UNDP has in place checks and balances to ensure transparency, and mechanisms to allow staff to air their concerns. We also have effective mechanisms for redressing legitimate grievances. Like any organization, we of course could undoubtedly do better. But our 2005 Global Staff Survey indicates that morale at UNDP is at the highest level since the survey began in 1999, with 74 per cent of staff saying they would recommend UNDP as a good place to work.
"Finally" is right - it was six hours after UNDP distributed the press release. The statement that UNDP "will no longer be responding to unsubstantiated allegations about UNDP’s recruitment and personnel practices" means, for example, that questions about violations of the UN System's stated hiring practices will simply not be answered by UNDP. Perhaps UNDP sees an opportunity, in the time Secretary-General transition with some key Under-Secretaries General already gone, to declare independence from transparency, the press and the public. We'll see.
By contrast, fast answers were provided Friday on Sudan and Somalia -- the sides should talk, always a fine thing to say -- and a speech made up on the Congo. Video here, from Minute 14:20. On Somalia, the spokesman said he hadn't seen reporters of increased shelling by Ethiopia (click here for one) and of Uganda chomping at the bit to send troops against the Islamic Courts Union. "The S-G would call on those who send troops to reach out to all Somalis," the spokesman speechified. Great. Meanwhile what has the UN's envoy Francois Lonseny Fall been doing? He's been to Mogadishu once. And the requested list of the UN's partners in Mogadishu? It has still not been provided, nor a simple list that was promised days ago. This regime is just playing out the string. And the gangsters, in the tent and out, seem to sense it...
Update of 7 p.m. -- Less than an hour after this article was published, and less than two after the emailed response above, Inner City Press found at the UN Spokesman's Office document counter a press release by UNDP, apparently placed there much earlier in the day, which makes a number of claims. Ironically, UNDP did not email a copy to Inner City Press, nor ask any question for comment prior to its "publication." UNDP tries to argue that individuals named in this series were not contacted prior to publication. In fact, Inner City Press called the direct lines of Brian Gleeson, Nora Lustig, Romesh Muttukumaru and others, as well as directly asking and attempt to ask questions of Kemal Dervis on Nov. 27 and Mark Malloch Brown on December 4.
Mr. Dervis, the head of a $5 billion UN Program, has not held a press conference in 14 months. There is more that will be said, while not deviating from the substance of this series on UNDP. This is merely an update a half-an-hour after seeing strangely UNDP's blind side press release, just before the festive annual ball of the UN Correspondents Association.
From Sleaze in Vietnam to Fights in DC-1, UNDP Appears Out of Control at the Top
Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at the UN - 3d in a series
UNITED NATIONS, December 1 -- In UNDP's far-flung empire, the strings are pulled for giving jobs by a very few hands in New York. This week the director of UNDP's Office of Human Resources Brian Gleeson was "re-designated" without notice to a quickly created Special Advisor post. Since Inner City Press' Wednesday night report on this, mail has flooded in. Below is a sample message regarding Vietnam, the author of which requested anonymity due to fear of retaliation by UNDP.
Where UNDP employees' communications allow for direct follow-up, Inner City Press has been calling UNDP. Friday Inner City Press telephoned the head of UNDP's Poverty Project Nora Lustig. UNDP sources have told Inner City Press that Ms. Lustig was brought in to UNDP in April 2006, outside of the normal channels, and that she has since then similarly brought on a crew of her own. Click here for Ms. Lustig on film.
Friday Ms. Lustig's secretary told Inner City Press that she was in a meeting, but wrote down a question and request for comment on a detailed account Inner City Press has heard from multiple sources of a incident in which, allegedly, Ms. Lustig was abusive to a UK staffer, in front of a representative from the UK Home Office, who complained of Ms. Lustig's behavior. The story goes on from there, and may soon be told at greater length in this space. In fairness get Ms. Lustig's comment, Inner City Press left a detailed question with her secretary, in the building known as DC-1 otherwise known as a maze. Ms. Lustig's secretary called back to say that Ms. Lustig was referring Inner City Press to Kemal Dervis' personal spokeswoman, who in turn stated that the deputy communications official of UNDP would call with answers, which never happened, as of 9:55 p.m. deadline.
Because of the involvement of UK officials and personnel, Inner City Press on Friday asked UK Ambassador Emyr Jones Parry about the incident, and whether he thought it appropriate, as a matter of UN reform and transparency, that the head of UNDP has not held a press conference in 14 months. Amb. Jones Parry said he would not be aware of the former, and had no comment on the latter, other than pro forma praise for UNDP. Further inquiries have been made with the UK mission.
At UNDP, a pattern of favoritism in hiring is emerging. Regarding Vietnam the following arrived:
Subject: Update on Brian Gleeson Story, for Mr. Matthew Russell Lee
From: [Name withheld upon request]
To: matthew.lee [at] innercitypress.com
Sent: Fri, 1 Dec 2006 3:44 AM
Dear Mr. Matthew Russell Lee,
I write as Vietnamese staff member at UNDP Viet Nam. I wish remain anonymous to protect my job, but I feel is my duty to write you about other linkages with Mr. Brian Gleeson and high salary appointments by Senior Management in our Country Office.
The story on Mr. Brian Gleason is quite demoralizing for many UNDP staff who carry out their duties with honesty, integrity and fairness.
But no organization is 100% clean. Senior Management of UNDP Viet Nam often advise our Party and Government on transparency and stamping out corruption, even while some of us know that some elements inside our office are not always clean.
But it seems that lower paid national staff are held at much higher standard than senior international staff who run our office. One female national staff member was made to suffer greatly for two years following minor infraction and then forced out of the organization.
Meanwhile not long after, our senior management approved a number of high paying international appointments without following required procedures and regulations of UNDP.
Many of us national staff know that former Resident Representative at UNDP Viet Nam Mr. Jordan Ryan (a close friend of Mr. Mark Malloch Brown) and the Deputy Resident Representative of Operations Mr. Neil Reece-Evans (a close friend of Mr. Brian Gleeson) collaborated to recruit through the "back door" an American friend from the past Mr. Jonathan Pincus at very high paying job in our office.
Mr. Brian Gleeson was informed but he choose to ignore. Mr. Jonathan Pincus then use similar procedure to hire his friends in the office and on projects.
Everything was made correct on paper according to procedure, but recruitment decisions were made prior to "official advertisements" and a recruitment process that was superficial and not clean.
Meanwhile there are many national economists in Viet Nam who can do the job at much lower cost or even other foreign economists living in Hanoi who require much less pay and can save transportation costs.
Some of these appointments should now be reviewed and cancelled and a proper recruitment process undertaken with open, fair and transparent competition for Vietnamese economists in our country. Mr. Kemal Dervis will visit our country next week, but we dare not speak.
I wish to remain anonymous. This seems only way to clean our organization.
This desire to clean up UNDP is widespread at the non-top levels of UNDP. And the account of bogus competitive evaluations for job which have already in reality been doled out to favored insiders is echoed from elsewhere in the system.
On Friday morning, Inner City Press put to Kemal Dervis and three members of his communications staff a set of six questions, one of which concerns hiring practices at UNDP Vietnam. As of six o'clock, there had been no response from UNDP. Therefore Inner City Press made two telephone calls to UNDP. Kemal Dervis' personal spokeswoman told Inner City Press that the agency's deputy spokesperson would be calling with answers. But as of 9:30 p.m. deadline, no information was forthcoming.
Now, after Inner City Press on Friday asked one and then another of the Permanent Five Security Council members' UN Ambassadors countries for their views on Kemal Dervis not having held a press conference in 14 months, Inner City Press is informed that Mr. Dervis will deign to take questions, it is believed on December 14. We'll see.
Again, because a number of Inner City Press' UNDP sources go out of their way to express commitment to serving the poor, and while it should be unnecessary, Inner City Press is compelled to conclude this second installment in a necessarily-ongoing series by saluting the stated goals of UNDP and many of its staff. As they used to say on TV game shows, keep those cards, letters and emails coming, and phone calls too, we apologize for any phone tag but keep the information coming -- "to clean [the] organization" of UNDP, as said above by the economist in Vietnam.
In UNDP, Drunken Mis-Managers on the Make Praised and Protected, Meet UNDP's Kalman Mizsei
Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at the UN, 2d in a Series
UNITED NATIONS, November 30 -- Drunk on a plane to Turkey, making racialist comments in a taxi in Johannesburg, engaging in sexual harassment and the awarding of jobs in expectation of sexual favors at the UN's Headquarters in New York. These are snapshots of the director for Europe and the CIS Countries for the UN Development Program, Kalman Mizsei, before he was finally asked and allowed to resign in September of this year.
A number of UNDP sources, including in Central Europe, have described for Inner City Press the tenure of Kalman Mizsei (pronounced, Mee-Jay) which included overseeing serious corruption at UNDP's Moscow office, in which funds from the European Union for rehabilitating the Moscow planetarium went missing, and UNDP served as a veneer for sole source contracts in exchange for 10% of the money passing through. Kalman Mizsei, a neo-conservative economist, was a proponent of these financial schemes, in which UNDP made money (built up "local resources," in the agency's parlance) for serving as a conduit on projects including by the World Bank for such things as irrigation and sewage projects.
Since UNDP had no technical expertise in these areas, it was easy for money to be stolen. But since so few journalists, at least at and around UN Headquarters, cover UNDP, and since UNDP Administrator Kemal Dervis makes himself unavailable to the media, not having held a press conference in 14 months, the well-meaning agency continues to be run into the ground. This is part two in Inner City Press' periodic series, Profiles in Kemal Dervis' UNDP.
First, the current set up. On November 27, Inner City Press sought to question Kemal Dervis in the entrance of UN Headquarters. "I don't take questions like this," Mr. Dervis answered. On November 29, Inner City Press sent questions by email to Mr. Dervis and his communications staff, including
Question: Was Kalman Mitzei fired or otherwise relieved or removed from his position with UNDP? If so, on what grounds?
On November 30, the following was sent from UNDP:
Subject: RE: Press questions, on deadline, re UNDP [and] Kalman Mitzei, etc.
From: [at] undp.org
To: Inner City Press
Sent: Thu, 30 Nov 2006 11:28 AM
Matthew, Below are the responses to your questions: [Question: Was Kalman Mitzei fired or otherwise relieved or removed from his position with UNDP? If so, on what grounds?]
Response: No. As stated previously, at UNDP -- like at other organizations -- with time colleagues retire, move on or are reassigned. After serving six distinguished years at UNDP, Mr. Miszei is now Professor at Central European University’s Department of Public Policy in Budapest.
The six distinguished years included an incident on a plane to Turkey, in which a drunken Kalman Mizsei assaulted a stewardess and the police were called, until the UN system helped extricate Mizsei from the problem. Inebriated or not, there were racist comments by Mizsei in a taxicab in Johannesburg, in earshot of a(nother) close associate of Mark Malloch Brown, then-head of UNDP and now Deputy Secretary-General. Sources indicate to Inner City Press that Kalman Mizsei's antics, including sexual harassment and violation of hiring rules in search of sexual favors, were "legend" within UNDP. That nothing was done for so long, and that UNDP continues to this day in response to direct questions about why Mizsei left to cover it up, is indicative of more serious problems.
In his capacity as Director of UNDP’s Regional Bureau for Europe and the CIS, Mizsei presided over mismanagement by UNDP Russian of a World Bank-funded sewer project. (The direct mis-manager, it is reported, is still working at the UN Office of Project Services, UNOPS, more regarding which later in this series.) The next UNDP Russia manager, Fred Lyons, made the mistake of firing a local-hire Russian employee. After that, Mizsei sent a fixer, a 33-year old Bulgarian who moved Fred Lyon out of the way (to Afghanistan) and took his job -- and then went on the lam himself, embroiled in a smaller, only $1 million UNDP Russia scandal with one Tatiana Gorlov.
Beyond these so-called smaller scandals, UNDP's business model in the Mark Malloch Brown era grew to include using UNDP's "excess administrative capacity" to become a middleman for project funded by others, about which UNDP knew little. Fees of up to 10% were paid to UNDP, for holding money for as little as one day. UNDP would provide the veneer of a legitimate bid-out and tender process, but in many cases the winner was pre-selected, and money even wired to them, before the supposed competition was held. This was and is called "mobilizing local resources," and was praised from the highest levels of UNDP.
One aside and interim update about Brian Gleeson, who yesterday was "redesignated" from heading up UNDP's Office of Human Resources to a Senior Advisor to Surge position: some Gleeson supporters, while not disputing that Kemal Dervis attempted to fire Gleeson as, in September, Kalman Mizsei was fired, say that along with the other issues, Gleeson refused to quash one or more investigations that Dervis wanted stopped. Brian Gleeson's office was called to discuss just this type of nuance. Watch this space.
But back to Kalman Mizsei. After a series of complaints, finally in September 2006, sources say, Mizsei was advised to resign or fire himself. Since returning to Hungary, he has bragged about, among other things, being a personal adviser to George Soros, even a nephew. Despite a number of UNDP sources placed at different levels of the agency saying that Mizsei was a disgrace and even a laughing-stock, an email query to Kemal Dervis and his communications staff this week resulted in the claim that Mizsei's service was distinguished and his departure entirely voluntary. If these are UNDP's and Dervis' standards, it is a sad day for the world's poor.
Because a number of Inner City Press' UNDP sources go out of their way to express commitment to serving the poor, and while it should be unnecessary, Inner City Press is compelled to conclude this second installment in a necessarily-ongoing series by saluting the stated goals of UNDP and many of its staff. As they used to say on TV game shows, keep those cards and letters (and now, emails) coming.
UNDP Sources Say Dervis Fires Malloch Brown-linked Officials, Then Offers Hush-Up Jobs
Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at the UN
UNITED NATIONS, November 29 -- Kemal Dervis, the administrator of the UN Development Programme, sent out an email mid-afternoon on November 29 stating that the Director of UNDP's Office of Human Resources, Brian Gleeson, was taking a lower-level job as a Senior Advisor. UNDP sources tell Inner City Press that the Special Advisor position was quickly created after two events. In the first, UNDP moved to fire Brian Gleeson for having funneled high-paying jobs, outside of normal channels, to associates of UN Deputy Secretary-General, and former UNDP Administrator, Mark Malloch Brown. According to these UNDP sources, alternative grounds for firing or requesting resignation involved sexual harassment or the outright sale of jobs for cash, or first month's salary. Then, between 11 a.m. and Mr. Dervis' 2:20 p.m. email, something changed. Some say Mark Malloch Brown intervened. Other say Mr. Gleeson went to the office of Kemal Dervis and showed evidence of other improprieties at UNDP which he would release if the firing proceeded. Suddenly the Senior Advisor position was offered, effective immediately.
This is also a story about an agency and its personnel being unable or unwilling to answer simple factual questions on a timely basis. By telephone and email, and in person in the case of Kemal Dervis, Inner City Press sought comment on these UNDP issues. The agency's head of Communications William Orme was told that these were questions on deadline, but made no response. Brian Gleeson was called and a detailed message was left with his secretary. Given the lack of subsequent response, only this film, click here, can be offered, expressing dissatisfaction at "certain political leaders" and at reporters for not telling the UN's story. You have to return calls, some reporters say.
In the UN Headquarters building, the UN spokesman was asked to seek comment, including from Mark Malloch Brown. Was Malloch Brown consulted prior to Mr. Gleeson's redesignation? Did Malloch Brown play any role in this process? These are yes or no questions.
It was at 2:20 p.m. Wednesday that Mr. Dervis wrote to "colleagues" that "this is to inform you that Brian Gleeson, Director, Office of Human Resources (OHR), Bureau of Management (BoM), has been designated to serve as Senior Advisor for the Surge Project in the Bureau for Crisis Prevention and Recovery... on Thursday, 30 November, 2006." Mr. Dervis' email also thanked Brian Gleeson for having "done a difficult job well." If the swirl of Gleeson issues remains, this written praise by the head of UNDP seems more like cover-up than diplomacy.
The demotion announced Tuesday is the most recent of moves by Mr. Dervis against officials previously installed by Mark Malloch Brown. In UNDP's Office of Finance, covering all European and CIS countries, the Hungarian Kalman Mitzei was fired, Inner City Press is told by UNDP sources, for sexual harassment and favoritism and was replaced by one of Mr. Dervis' colleagues from when he was at the World Bank, a before that from Belgrade. Observers question the wisdom of this selection, for Balkan(ized) geo-political reason and otherwise.
It's worth noting that both Mark Malloch Brown and Kemal Dervis formerly worked at the World Bank. Those who know him say Mr. Dervis envied Malloch Brown's ascent to the top of UNDP. Now that he rules UNDP, with surprisingly little oversight, Mr. Dervis is putting his own hand-picked associates in place.
From: Kemal Dervis [mailto:kemal.dervis@undp.org]
Sent: Wednesday, November 29, 2006 2:20 PM
Subject: Appointment of Brian Gleeson as Senior Advisor for BCPR Surge Project
Dear Colleagues,
This is to inform you that Brian Gleeson, Director, Office of
Human Resources (OHR), Bureau of Management (BoM), has been designated to serve
as Senior Advisor for the Surge Project in the Bureau for Crisis Prevention and
Recovery (BCPR). On behalf of the organization, I would like to thank Brian for
doing a difficult job well for more than two and a half years and to wish him
success in his new assignment While the selection process for the appointment of
a new OHR Director is underway, I have asked Romesh Muttukumaru, Acting Deputy
Director of the Bureau for Resources and Strategic Partnerships (BRSP), to serve
as Officer-in-Charge of OHR. These transition arrangements will come into effect
on Thursday, 30 November, 2006. I urge all staff to please cooperate during this
transition period.
With best regards, Kemal
Mark Malloch Brown, of course, is still asserting himself. His close ally Bruce Jenks remains in place at UNDP's Bureau of Resources and Partnerships (Mr. Jenks was traveling on Wednesday and would not be able to comment, Inner City Press was told, until next week at the earliest) and his Cape Verdean associate Carlos Lopez has been selected to give briefings to incoming Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.
Some call it Shakespearean, this hard-ball dueling between ex-World Bankers Kemal Dervis and Mark Malloch Brown. But how is it, these people ask, that high-paying UNDP jobs are given outside of official channels, in some cases, such as that of one Nancy Barnes, without even showing up in databases of employees? In UNDP's European Union and CIS shop, corruption is said to be endemic. The European Union in Brussels funnels funding through UNDP, a funding stream never reviewed even by UNDP's Executive Board. Nor is oversight being given by UNDP auditor Jessie Mabutas, whose role in jobs-for-pay may be more participatory than investigative. More on this next week.
For now we note: on November 27, Inner City Press attempted to ask Kemal Dervis questions in the General Assembly hall, after a meeting about the Millennium Development Goals. As Inner City Press recounted at that day's UN noon briefing, Mr. Dervis said, "I don't answer questions this way, walking out of meetings." Inner City Press reiterated its request, made for more than five months now, that Mr. Dervis come to a press conference and answer questions, which he hasn't done since a single press conference when he got the UNDP job, 14 months ago. Mr. Dervis indicated that it would take a "special event" to get him to a press conference. Might these events be considered special? We'll see.
Inner City Press sought to reach Brian Gleeson on Wednesday afternoon. His office expressed surprise that word of his (down) shift to Special Advisor had "spread to the UN." Some thought that UNDP was part of the United Nations. UNDP is the UN's main representative to most countries. But UNDP these days is apparently run as a fiefdom unto itself. In seeking UNDP's explanation for Mr. Gleeson's abrupt downshift, and UNDP's response to this story, messages to the UNDP Communications Office went unanswered, as has become a pattern. An attempt to reach Kalman Mitzei yielded that he has returned by Hungary. A 6:45 p.m. call to Romesh Muttukumaru, Brian Gleeson's interim replacement at the helm of UNDP Human Resources, yielded an outgoing message that Romesh Muttukumaru was busy on the phone; a message seeking comment, or UNDP's official explanation of the change at the top of its Office of Human Resources, was not returned.
Given what UNDP sources say of Mr. Gleeson, now downshifted to advisory status with "the Surge Project in the Bureau for Crisis Prevention and Recovery," it's worth noting that a recent UNDP job ad for a position with this Surge Project in the BCPR lists, among required "corporate competencies," that the employee (and presumably advisor) "Treats all people fairly without favoritism" and "Demonstrates integrity by modeling the UN values and ethical standards." Developing...
UNDP Dodges Questions of Disarmament Abuse in Uganda and of Loss of Togo AIDS Grant, Dhaka Snafu
Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at the UN
UNITED NATIONS, November 24 -- In eastern Uganda, villages this month have been burned and residents shot and killed by government soldiers. The Uganda military has been asked by UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour to halt a cordon-and-search disarmament program which has killed 55 civilians in the Karamoja region. Uganda's deputy defense minister Ruth Nankabirwa has said the program will continue, telling reporters that "It is true that some people were killed, but in an operation where both sides are armed, you should expect such things to happen."
Missing from both stories, and from Louise Arbour's report, is that the UN Development Programme funded and encouraged the wave of cordon-and-search disarmament earlier this year, until UNDP begrudgingly suspected its funding. Uganda's New Vision newspaper of June 28, 2006, under the headline " UNDP suspends Karamoja projects" recounted that
"Inner City Press reported that the UPDF were committing abuses in the process of the cordon and search exercise, including killing of people and burning of homes and shelters. But both the UPDF spokesman, Maj. Felix Kulayigye and the eastern and northeastern spokesman, Capt. Paddy Ankunda, dismissed the reports yesterday. 'That is absolutely ridiculous,' Ankunda said."
Since then, UNDP dodged answering whether it has resumed funding the program, and UNDP has most recently reverted to claiming that it never funded or encouraged the program. A month ago, around Karamojo, UNDP's spokesman wrote Inner City Press: "As we conveyed to the Spokesman's office when you first raised this question there, neither UNDP nor the UN is the appropriate source for comment on a member-state government inquiry; we would suggest perhaps the UN mission from Uganda may help."
UNDP has not always been adverse to commenting on Uganda's disarmament programs. UNDP's spokesman had previously informed Inner City Press that
"In 2006 UNDP began work on an independent community development and human security project in the Karamoja region, one component of which was the encouragement of voluntary disarmament. The project was budgeted initially for $1 million, to be financed from UNDP's Uganda country office [Due to a misunderstanding on my part I erroneously identified to you in our conversation Tuesday the government of Denmark as a funder of this project.] Only $293,000 has been spent to date and all UNDP activities in the region are now halted, given that they are unworkable at this time, for the reasons noted."
On May 25, 2006, then UNDP Country Director Cornelis Klein gave a speech praising Uganda's disarmament programs -- during a time that, as reported by Inner City Press, Karamojong villages were being torched and civilians tortured and killed. Mr. Klein's speech, still online as of this writing, said:
"Uganda -- and the state institutions involved here today -- is fast becoming a leading light in Africa and beyond in how it is seizing the opportunity to address small and light weapons concerns. While UNDP currently provides modest support to the nation, it is Uganda that can support and lead other countries in doing the same. Let me take this opportunity, therefore, to applaud the Government for its strong leadership and commitment."
The Ugandan government's in-house investigation of that round of violent disarmament, for which the Kampala newspaper the Daily Monitor credited Inner City Press, is still pending, even as more burning and killing by government soldiers takes place. Most close observers opine that at least the May phase of the cordon-and-search operation was intended to meet UNDP's aggressive goals for disarmament, for a photo-op for a UNDP country representative who has since dropped out of sight, refusing to take questions.
UNDP's lack of forthrightness and follow-up about abuses in Eastern Uganda is echoed in more recent agency responses regarding its administration of AIDS programs in Togo, and non-responses regarding Bangladesh.
In Togo, grants of millions of dollars were stopped earlier this year due, the donor said, to the UN Development Programme filing incorrect data. While the health of thousands of HIV-positive Togolese continues to decline, questions to UNDP result, days later, in finger-pointing at the donor, and a full two-week delay in any UNDP response to a critique by Bangladesh officials. A Ugandan cordon-and-search disarmament program which UNDP previously acknowledges having supported has killed dozens of civilians in the past months. Now UNDP denies ever having funded the program. UNDP's Administrator Kemal Dervis has not made himself available for press questions in the UN's Headquarters for more than 14 months. And so the questions continue to back up.
On November 13, Inner City Press sent UNDP's main Communications Office in New York a request for comment on UNDP snafus in Togo and Bangladesh. Two days later, UNDP acknowledged receipt of the request and promised response by November 15.
After deadline on November 15, one of UNDP's spokespeople sent this:
Subject: RE: UNDP questions, re Togo and Bangladesh
From: @undp.org
To: Inner City Press
Sent: Fri, 17 Nov 2006 6:12 PM
Kindly find below our response to your question on Togo. We will get back to you on your Bangladesh query shortly.
Question: Please explain UNDP's actions on HIV/AIDS in Togo, including addressing the report (below) that funding has been lost. ("The Global Fund, the main donor of antiretroviral (ARV) treatment in Togo, halted one of two three-year HIV grants amounting to US$15.5 million in January 2006, citing "irregularities" in the information provided by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) on managing the money.")
Answer: With regards to the Global Fund, the Togolese HIV/AIDS grant proposal, developed by a multidisciplinary coordination committee, was approved in 2003. In light of its previous experience in neighboring countries, UNDP was appointed as the grant's principal recipient....A June 2006 evaluation by Price Waterhouse of data provided by UNDP and the concerned NGOs concluded that UNDP had not put in place systems to ensure effective reporting from the field, making it difficult to verify the actual number of people or communities serviced. As part of its normal project operations, UNDP had advanced funds for selected activities. Prior to reimbursing UNDP for these expenses, the Global Fund called for a financial review. In response, UNDP launched a bidding process in the sub-region and the firm CGIC won the bid and was contracted to carry out this independent financial review. As CGIC has confirmed in a declaration to the media and in its discussions with Togo's President, Prime Minister and Minister of Health, that study, undertaken in September and October 2006, found that, while there may have been errors in the data reported, there was no mismanagement or fraud... The Country Coordination Mechanism -- a body consisting of national partners, such as the concerned ministries, NGOs and the private sector, as well as international partners, which manages Global Fund matters in Togo -- could make a special request for the purchase of the ARVs in order to ensure that treatment of the 3,000 patients continues."
But it is uncontested that due to the improper data, no new patients have been accepted. On Saturday, November 18, UNDP sent a further clarification:
In a message dated 11/18/2006 12:02:17 PM, @undp.org writes:
I'd like to clarify something regarding the Togo information I provided you yesterday evening: In its financial review report, CGIC found that no fraud or mismanagement existed. It was the Global Fund 's Manager for Togo, M. Mabingue Ngom, who informed the country's President, Prime Minister and the Minister of Health that there was no fraud or mismanagement."
Subsequently, Inner City Press has asked for a copy of the CGIS audit. No response has been received. Nor has any response been received regarding Bangladesh, despite the passage of 11 days. It has been reported from Bangladesh that:
"The Ministry of Commerce has rejected a Preparatory Assistance (PA) project proposal of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) as it finds the UN organization jobs unplanned, lack of coordination and integrated mechanism. 'The UNDP only suggest preparatory assistance projects rather to take further full projects to address the identified problems," one of the commerce ministry officials' said."
How can it take 11 days to provide a comment on this? The spin machine is at work.
It has been 14 months since UNDP Administrator Kemal Dervis appeared to take questions in UN Headquarters. On November 27, Mr. Dervis will be in UN Headquarters to attend a meeting on the Millennium Development Goals. While two of the other participants will, that afternoon, take questions at a UN press conference, Mr. Dervis is notably not listed as available for questions. While, after repeated requests, Inner City Press has been told he will take questions sometime in December, the need for answers is now.
At the UN, The Swan Song of Jan Egeland and the Third Committee Loop, Somalia Echoes Congo
Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at the UN
UNITED NATIONS, November 22 -- While in Somalia, Ethiopian troops now openly patrol the roads to Baidoa, and U.S. Special Forces are reported on the Somali border with Kenya, Inner City Press on Wednesday asked American Ambassador John Bolton for the U.S. position on the unfolding war in the Horn of Africa.
"I don't have anything for you on that," Amb. Bolton said. Video here.
But it's reported that the U.S. State Department has commissioned a report which warns that up to a dozen countries could be drawn into war in Somalia, echoing the Congo. And at the U.S. State Department's Wednesday briefing, Deputy Spokesman Tom Casey deflected DC-based reporters' questions by referring to a process at the UN -- "this is something that's under discussions and in consultation at the UN" -- a process on which the U.S. Ambassador to the UN was unwilling to comment. Passing the buck?
Meanwhile at the UN, the Somalia Monitoring Group's four members, called experts, are apparently in hiding. Their recently-leaked report names violators of the sanctions, and says that 720 Somalis were in South Lebanon. Despite the spokesman saying they would briefing the press this week, they have not been seen. It is reported that the Security Council Sanctions Committee is arranging for the countries named in the report to be able to question the experts, at some unspecified time and place next week. Inner City Press asked the spokesman if Uganda has protested the report. The spokesman said this has happened in a meeting, verbally. When and where this meeting took place was not specified.
The UN Development Fund for Women, UNIFEM, on Wednesday announced 28 grants in 17 countries to counter domestic violence against women. Four are in Somalia, with one each in Somaliland and Puntland. Inner City Press asked UNIFEM director Noeleen Heyzer if her agency has had dealings with the Union of Islamic Courts. Mr. Heyzer said yes, and that details would be provided. We'll see. Inner City Press asked for UNIFEM comment on the trial in Utah for rape and polygamy. Ms. Heyzer said the case shows that there is domestic violence "without regard to income." Dog bites man -- or should.
Tuesday John Bolton has been slated to speak at Syracuse University. Inner City Press asked a staff if it was being cancelled and was told no, Amb. Bolton would do it by video-conference. Subsequently it was reported that Amb. Bolton was canceling, because he was "unable to travel to Syracuse because of pressing negotiations over Iran in the U-N Security Council." But Tuesday's meetings were entirely about Lebanon.
After Amb. Bolton bolted Wednesday morning, Jackie Sanders took over. She said that she "too want to thank Under Secretary-General Jan Egeland for his briefing on some of the continuing critical humanitarian challenges in Africa. We're grateful for his first-hand report on the initiative mediated by the Government of Southern Sudan to bring an end to the mayhem perpetrated by the Lord's Resistance Army."
Back in October, judge Richard Goldstone told Inner City Press that no one in the UN should be meeting with International Criminal Court indictees Joseph Kony and Vincent Otti of the LRA, unless and until the Security Council formally suspends the indictments.
Wednesday Inner City Press asked Jan Egeland to explain how a UN Under Secretary General meeting with LRA leaders Joseph Kony and Vincent Otti while International Criminal Court arrest warrants for Kony and Otti are outstanding doesn't create at least the appearance of impunity. Egeland responded that there is no impunity, but that justice might be done in a national or "local" way.
Bitter root ceremonies for war criminals?
Inner City Press also asked Egeland to comment on rumors that he may remain in the UN system, while living in Norway, working for a new UN micro-agency charged with mediation support. Video here. Egeland shrugged and said he plans to write a book, and to sleep in his own bed after having lived like a guerrilla fighter. A reporter laughed, then asked what the lede should be, for Egeland's briefing. If he's going to write a book, he'll make his own ledes from now on.
Wednesday morning, asked by Inner City Press about human rights resolutions pending in the Third Committee of the UN General Assembly, Amb. Bolton said that his colleague "Ambassador Miller" would be in the Third Committee meetings down in Conference Room 1 in the basement. That would be Richard Terrence Miller, described by the mission as an "accomplished singer himself."
Inner City Press found Amb. Miller in Conference Room 1, his entourage sprawled out on a nearby table. While in the Security Council each country-representative has four seats behind him or her, in Conference Room 1 is only one assister's seat. So while Cameroon had a lone attendee, the U.S.'s team spread out. Six countries voted to censure the U.S. on human rights: Belarus, Cuba, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Iran, Myanmar, and Syria. Several more said they would have voted against the U.S., invoking Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib and Fallujah, but they were principled in opposing all country-specific human rights resolutions. There was groaning in the audience, particularly when the chairman said that proceedings would continue on Friday. After a beat, he corrected himself and said Tuesday. The crowd broke into the cheer, and the meeting broke up. A journalist from the crux between Europe and Asia was heard to say, Turkey can't have a turkey. And again the groaning started...
In the UN, Uzbekistan Gets a Pass on Human Rights As Opposition to U.S. Grows and War's On in Somalia
Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at the UN
UNITED NATIONS, November 20 -- On Friday evening, the UN General Assembly moved to express concern and investigate Israel's bombing of Gaza, by a vote of 156 in favor, 7 against and 6 abstaining. Afterwards, Inner City Press interviewed the GA President, Sheikha Haya Rashed Al Khalif. "According to the [UN] Charter," she said, "we are the people of the world. We must protect civilians."
Inner City Press asked GA President to compare the processes of the GA and Security Council. "This is democracy, you see," she said. "Nobody accepts killing civilians for no reason. It is not fair."
On Monday morning, the GA's Third Committee voted to quash a resolution expressing concern about the "Situation of human rights in Uzbekistan," A/C.3/61/L.39. The vote was close, with 74 countries voting with Uzbekistan, 69 against, and 24 abstaining.
The UN's Special Rapporteur on torture has found that in Uzbekistan "there is ample evidence that both police and other security forces have been and are continuing to systematically practice torture, in particular against dissidents or people who are opponents of the regime" of Islam Karimov. Particularly vulnerable are participants or witnesses in the May 2005 Andijan demonstrations, ended by government crackdown.
The UN Secretary-General's recent report on Uzbekistan "highlights concerns over asylum seekers and refugees who fled Andijan and have been detained or returned to Uzbekistan, including fears for the safety of five men who were returned by Kyrgyz authorities in August. The Uzbek Government claimed fewer than 200 people were killed in the unrest. However, more than 450 of the Uzbek refugees subsequently provided testimony... Uzbek authorities called for the closure of the UNHCR office in Uzbekistan earlier this year."
Monday when the results were posted, showing victory for Uzbekistan's request for no action on its human rights record, "there was applause among some delegations as the results appeared on the electronic voting board," as described by the UN's Meeting Coverage.
The 74 countries voting to quash any further inquiry into Uzbekistan's human rights record include, for example, Russia, China, South Africa, Morocco, Pakistan and India, which is the beneficiary last week of a U.S. Senate vote for the nuclear sharing.
Following the vote, early Monday afternoon Inner City Press asked U.S. Ambassador John Bolton to comment on the Third Committee's vote against the U.S.-sponsored resolution on Uzbekistan. From the U.S. Mission-prepared transcript:
Inner City Press: The Third Committee just voted down this morning the resolution on human rights in Uzbekistan. Does the U.S. -- or do you have any comment on that not going forward?
Ambassador Bolton: It's obviously a disappointment to us. I've been involved in the Security Council all morning. I can't -- I don't know what the vote was, so --
The vote was 74 for Uzbekistan, 69 for the U.S.-sponsored resolution, and 24 abstainers, including Brazil, Colombia, Ethiopia, Ghana, Haiti, Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, Uganda and Somalia (this last apparently referring to those in Baidoa, where the UN's Francois Lonseny Fall held a meeting on Monday regarding which the UN spokesman had no read-out, hours later, see below in this report for Somalia update.)
Those not voting at all on the Uzbekistan resolution included Burundi, Cameroon, Chad, Lebanon and Cote D'Ivoire, which abstained from Friday's vote on Israel, in a move many called a return favor to the U.S. for supporting Laurent Gbagbo during the recent Security Council resolution process.
Friday by the Security Council Inner City Press asked for a U.S. comment on the loss of American Michael J. Matheson, one of 44 candidates for 34 seats on the UN International Law Commission. Inner City Press was told this was not part of any larger trend of U.S. losses in the United Nations, but only the product of their being other qualified European candidates. What struck many observers in Friday's votes was the EU and even United Kingdom breaking from the U.S. and voting for the resolution to investigate the bombing of Beit Hanoun. In the Security Council resolution that the U.S. vetoed, the UK had abstained.
Has Uzbekistan benefited from growing opposition to the United States? Separately, have some agencies in the UN system working with the Karimov regime, for example UNDP helping the regime collect taxes, helped bring about Monday's result? Developing.
On Somalia, some updates were provided in response to Inner City Press' questions to the UN Spokesman on Monday:
Inner City Press: In the reports from Somalia between Ethiopian troops and the Union of Islamic Courts, can anyone in the United Nations system confirm, deny or speak to that?
Spokesman: I'll see if I can get something from the Somali office.
Inner City Press: Has Lonseny Fall or any... I know he was supposed to be... (inaudible)
Spokesman: I did not have an update on his activities today, but we'll try to get one.
Inner City Press: And also on the monitoring group report on Somalia. On Friday, I think you said what countries had protested or issued demarches to the United Nations about their being named in the report. Do you have that list?
Spokesman: I had that list Friday afternoon and I've deleted it from my head. There were two countries that came to see the Secretariat and I do know a number of other countries have written to the Sanctions Committee. For that, you would have to talk to the Security Council.
Inner City Press: Do we know what two countries?
Spokesman: That, I will find out. [The correspondent was later informed that, as of today, the countries that had filed formal complaints to the UN Secretariat in reaction to the Somalia report were Egypt, Iran and Syria.
It is unclear why Uganda is not on this list. Later on Monday, the following arrived:
"We have no independent confirmation of fighting between Somalia's Islamist fighters and Ethiopian troops. FYI, the Ethiopian government has denied that any fighting took place or that any Ethiopian troops were killed in Somalia by Islamists."
Now even Somalia's president has admitted the presence of Ethiopian troops in Somalia. Developing.
At the UN, Cluster Bombs Unremembered, Uighurs Disappeared and Jay-Z Returns with Water -- for Life
Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at the UN
UNITED NATIONS, November 17 -- As in the UN General Assembly speeches continued on Israel's bombing of Gaza, Israel's Ambassador Dan Gillerman was asked by Inner City Press about his country's use of cluster bombs. "I must confess I really don't know about that," Ambassador Gillerman said. "I arrived very early this morning. I may have missed something during my flight." Video here, at Minute 12:41.
Inner City Press subsequently asked Kofi Annan's spokesman if the UN's condemnation of cluster bombs, and their use in South Lebanon earlier this year, had been conveyed to Israel. The spokesman answered, "We have spoken out very publicly." Video here, at Minute 14:50.
On the topic of the power plant in Gaza, which was destroyed by Israeli bombs and is insured by the U.S. Overseas Private Insurance Corporation, Inner City Press asked Amb. Gillerman for an update. Video here, at Minute 10:55. "We are in the process of building a high-pressure cable to enable the residents of Gaza to have electricity," Amb. Gillerman replied. Another correspondent muttered, "So that they can turn it on and off." Inner City Press later asked the UN for an update, and received this in return:
"It would appear that temporary transformers from Egypt (replacing the destroyed ones from Sweden) are in place , with power imported from Israel also assisting to cover any outstanding gaps. This is a temporary measure."
The U.S. government's OPIC's role in this should be pursued. Recently, the U.S. government's aid chief, Randall Tobias, who visited Lebanon last month to check on U.S. aid work there, said that "at the time I was there, the estimate was that we had removed or assisted in the removal of about 50,000 pieces of unexploded ordnance."
Another traveling U.S. diplomat was in the UN on Friday: Phil Reeker, previously a State Department spokesman and now the Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Budapest. In the half-light of the Security Council stakeout he recounted how the-Secretary of State Colin Powell has once offered to "drop him off" by plane in Budapest while flying elsewhere, an offer with Reeker declined.
Reeker's companion, who will remain unnamed, pointed out that the day after the UN General Assembly's Third Committee passed a resolution about naming-and-shaming countries on human rights, the full GA spent the day debating Israel's bombing of Gaza. Inner City Press subsequently put this question to the GA President's spokeswoman, who said "there are ironies everywhere."
Later she pointed out that the full GA does not yet have to follow a resolution approved in committee.
Later still, she forwarded an answer to Inner City Press' question if the GA's new Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance" applies to the U.S.'s extraordinary rendition flights, or to abductions by North Korea. The answer, from the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights' Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances, is that "extraordinary rendition is not necessarily enforced disappearance. There are several elements of the act that are required. The definition of enforced disappearance is contained in the draft Convention, as well as the preamble to the GA Declaration on Enforced Disappearance."
These provide that "enforced disappearance is considered to be the arrest, detention, abduction or any other form of deprivation of liberty committed by agents of the State or by persons or groups of persons acting with the authorization, support or acquiescence of the State, followed by a refusal to acknowledge the deprivation of liberty or by concealment of the fate or whereabouts of the disappeared person, which place such a person outside the protection of the law."
Significantly, the new Convention on Involuntary Disappearances also provides that "no exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification for enforced disappearance."
So --the definition of involuntary disappearance appears to apply to abductions, extraordinary rendition and to the fate of the Chinese Uighur last seen in Kazakhstan, described below in this report.
The Third Committee's passage of the resolution against naming-and-shaming countries on their human rights records was not the United States' only loss on Thursday. In elections of 34 members of the UN International Law Commission, from only 44 candidates, the U.S. nominee Michael J. Matheson lost out, while among the elected were representatives from Cameroon and Sri Lanka and, from Nigeria, Bayo Ojo. The GA President will be meeting with NGOs on Tuesday, her spokeswoman says.
Inner City Press asked Kofi Annan's spokesman for comment on the GA's Third Committee's passage of a resolution against the naming-and-shaming of countries for their human rights records. While declining to comment on the GA's work, the spokesman made reference to Mr. Annan's earlier statements that the countries on the new Human Rights Council should have their records reviewed. Inner City Press then asked if Mr. Annan or anyone else in the UN system has spoken out about incidents in Mexico's Oaxaca region -- Governor Ulises Ruiz's crackdown on APPO, the dead of journalist Brad Will, etc. -- particularly given Mexico's role in the UN Human Rights Council. Subsequently, the spokesman's office sent Inner City Press the following:
"The Special Rapporteur on Indigenous Issues made a statement on the situation last month. The High Commissioner for Human Rights Office in Mexico is monitoring the situation and is in contact with the authorities. They also issued a statement condemning the violent acts in late October."
Speaking of speaking out, Jay-Z returned to the United Nations on Thursday evening, and took questions from reporters in the lobby of the UN prior to the premiere of the MTV documentary "Water For Life."
As first done at the August 8 press conference announcing that this documentary would be filmed, Inner City Press on Thursday asked Jay-Z for his views on the privatization of water systems in the developing world. On August 8, Jay-Z called the question one of "bureaucracy."
Thursday he answered, "I don't know about privatization. I was just in people's houses."
Inner City Press asked a follow-up question, if the water in the houses he visited was provided by governments or private businesses.
"They paid fifty cents a bucket for it," Jay-Z said.
"Sounds like privatization to me," a correspondent muttered.
Upstairs in the Trusteeship Council chamber, there were roped-off VIP rows. Journalists were herded to the front, then told to go back, up to the video booths. The wireless worked fine, as Anne Veneman of UNICEF thanked "Jay-Z and his staff," and mentioned his trip to Angola. A reporter arranging a trip to Angola found that visas cost over $200. Ms. Veneman called it the launch of UNDP's report on water, about which reporters were briefed ten days ago. Click here for Inner City Press' story on the report, including on UNDP's partnering with Shell Oil and Coca-Cola.
Back on August 8, when Jay-Z briefed reporters at the UN at his video's outset, he praised Coca-Cola for providing ten "play pumps" to children in Africa. Coca-Cola is under fire on at least two continents for pilfering communities' water resources to profit from sugar-laden soda. Is humanitarianism being privatized as well? "I don't know," was the seconded response.
The documentary will be shown on MTV-2 on November 19, and on MTV itself on November 24. The footage of Angola is worth it.
Later on Thursday night, the UN Mission of Kazakhstan threw a party, with a fashion show and an apparently lip-synching trio of singers, at the New York Palace Hotel on Madison Avenue. The models in the fashion show were, as usual, tall, and some were blonde (not expected). The reception afterwards featured lamb chops and shrimp and the crowd contained, among others, the Russian mission's press spokeswoman, Ambassadors of Hungary and Azerbaijan, the teacher of the Kazakh Ambassador's daughter and, of course, the Ambassador himself, Yerzhan Kazykhanov, one of the best hosts in the UN. Afterwards many of the attendees loaded onto an Omega Express tour bus, which a bodyguard said was headed "to Pennsylvania." Mysterious, but not as troubling as the fate of the Chinese Uighur asylum seeker who disappeared in Almaty on October 23, click here for more.
From the UN, Silence on War Crimes Enforcement and Conflicts of Interest on Complaint from Bahrain
Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at the UN
UNITED NATIONS, November 16 -- "Sometimes you have to sleep with the Devil if it means getting kids out," UK Ambassador Emyr Jones Parry told Inner City Press on Thursday, referring to the UN's Jan Egeland having recently met with Joseph Kony of Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army.
The LRA for twenty years has fought both the Museveni government and people of northern Uganda. The LRA's leader Joseph Kony has been quoted: "You report us with your mouth, and we cut off your lips. Who is to blame? It is you! The Bible says that if you hand, eye or mouth is at fault, it should be cut off."
On July 8, 2005, the UN's International Criminal Court issued a sealed indictment of Joseph Kony, his deputy Vincent Otti and three others. The indictments were supposed to remain confidential until the five men were apprehended. In late September 2005, however, the head of the UN's Department of Political Affairs, Ibrahim Gambari, let slip that the five were indicted. Subsequently the ICC confirmed it.
More than a year later, none of the five has been arrested. Last week the UN's head of humanitarian affairs, Jan Egeland, announced he would meet with Joseph Kony if, in advance of the meeting, the LRA released some of the children they have abducted. Although no release was made, Egeland met with Kony, and emerged to request that Museveni pull his troops further back from the LRA camps. There are peace talks going on, in which Kony and Otti are demanding that the ICC indictments be dropped.
Thursday the UN Security Council met on the LRA. On the way in, U.S. Ambassador John Bolton stopped to talk with reporters. He did not, however, make any mention of Uganda. Peruvian Ambassador Voto-Bernales came out to the microphone and read a statement, about Haiti.
Inner City Press asked Amb. Voto-Bernales about Haiti, whether the Council would send the reinforcement that UN envoy Edmond Mulet has requested, and about the LRA -- are the indictments being discussed? On Haiti, Amb. Voto-Bernales said that other than the death of two UN peacekeepers from Jordan, the news on Haiti is "good." Video here. On the LRA, he said that a Presidential Statement was being finalized in the chamber, and he said he would come out to the microphone after the meeting. The Statement does not mention the ICC, or the indictments.
After the meeting, and with Council President Voto-Bernales nowhere to be found, Inner City Press asked UK Ambassador Emyr Jones Perry if the Presidential Statement the Council issued meant that the ICC indictments are on hold. "Not at all," Amb. Jones Parry answered.
But what about the UN's Jan Egeland meeting with Joseph Kony?
Amb. Jones Parry said that the meeting was held to get children released. "Sometimes you have to sleep with the Devil if it means getting kids out," Ambassador Jones Parry said.
Inner City Press then asked, "Do you think Jan Egeland will stay in the UN system?"
"I'm sure he won't," said Ambassador Jones Parry.
There have been rumors of the UN setting up a mediation unit, to be based in Norway, which Jan Egeland would head up, and that would be funded by Norway. Others say that the idea is now being scrapped. Others say that Egeland's visit to Kony -- which some called "Jesse Jackson-like" -- was something of a try out for high profile mediation. If so, more doubts have been raised than questions answered. No prisoners were released, and Kony was given a platform upon which to deny having kidnapped children. Impunity? Time will tell.
Inner City Press ran from the Q&A with Amb. Jones Parry to ask Kofi Annan's spokesman a question. Opposition groups in Bahrain have asked Mr. Annan to investigate reports that the government of Bahrain's ruling al-Kalifa family has been "secretly planning to manipulate the demographic makeup of the country, through the selective granting of citizenship... under the guise of creating a Shiite-Sunni balance in the country but would in fact weaken the Shiite population, 70 per cent of Bahrainis." Another report notes that "Bahrain will hold parliamentary elections Nov. 25. The elections could trigger a fresh wave of unrest, pitting the ruling Sunni al-Khalifa family against the country's Shiite majority.
The spokesman said he will look into the letter and Mr. Annan's response. Video here, from Minute 18. Inner City Press then asked the spokeswoman for Sheikha Haya Rashed Al Khalifa, the General Assembly president and a member of Bahrain's al-Khalifa family, to get a comment. Video here, from Minute 25:13. The spokesman said that she didn't think there would be any comment, in the capacity of GA President. How about in another capacity? We'll see. One of the issues here is of structural conflict, wherein a UN Secretary-General is asked to investigate the family of the GA President, with whom the Secretary-General must work. Some have suggested that the GA President might publicly say something like, "Mr. Secretary-General, I will not be offended if you grant the request to investigate my family. In fact, it is better than you grant the request, to remove any appearance of conflict of interest." Other have suggested that the Secretary-General might recuse himself from the request. With USG Chris Burnham gone, who will provide guidance? Developing.
Nagorno-Karabakh President Disputes Fires and Numbers, Oil and UN, in Exclusive Interview with Inner City Press - Video here
Byline: Matthew Russell Lee, Correspondent at the UN
UNITED NATIONS, November 13 -- Of the so-called frozen conflicts in the world, the one in the Nagorno-Karabakh region in Azerbaijan, claimed by Armenia, heated up this Fall -- literally.
In August and September 2006, Azerbaijan and Armenia traded volleys of draft resolutions in the UN General Assembly, about a series of fires in the Nagorno-Karabakh region which on most maps is Azerbaijan, but is not under Azeri control.
The subtext of the fight was that Azerbaijan wants the dispute to be addressed in the UN General Assembly, while Armenia prefers the ten-year process before the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the OSCE. In the UN General Assembly these frozen conflicts are often treated as footnotes, particularly to a press corps which covers the Security Council in the most minute detail, at the expense of most other activities undertaken by the world body.
Last week Inner City Press sat down for an interview with the president of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, Arkady Ghoukasyan, and asked him about the fires, about the UN and other matters. Click here for the video.
"The fires were provoked by Azerbaijan firing," Mr. Ghoukasyan said. "They used special bullets that would ignite wheat fields."
In the UN, "the countries of the Islamic Conference are present and Azerbaijan is hoping to use their support," said Mr. Ghoukasyan. He added that most countries in the UN know little of the Karabakh conflict, so "Azerbaijan can try propaganda in the United Nations," in a way that it can't with the OSCE "experts."
By contrast, the situation in Abkhazia is routinely put on the UN Security Council agenda by Russia, with representative of Georgia often excluded from the meetings and resorting to sparsely-attended press conferences outside, most recently on October 12.
On Nagorno-Karabakh, UN observers see Turkey backing Azerbaijan, while the NKR is represented, if one can call it that, by Armenia. The interview, originally scheduled for a hotel across from UN Headquarters, was moved six blocks south to the Armenian mission in a brownstone on 36th Street, to a second-story room with the Nagorno-Karabakh flag on the table. Through a translator, Mr. Ghoukasyan argued that no negotiations that do not involve representatives of Nagorno-Karabakh can solve the problem. "The prospects are diminishing, without Nagorno-Karabakh involvement, it's just impossible to come to a resolution," he said.
Hot Words From Frozen Conflicts
Inner City Press asked Mr. Ghoukasyan to compare Nagorno-Karabakh to certain other so-called frozen conflicts, two of which are before the OSCE: Transnistria a/k/a Transdnestr, and South Ossetia, where a referendum was held on November 12, the results of which no country in the world recognized.
"We already had our referendum," Mr. Ghoukasyan said, "back in 1991. We would only hold another one if Azerbaijan and the co-chairs of the OSCE group agreed in advance to recognize its results."
Mr. Ghoukasyan said he had come to the U.S. less to build political support or to propose a referendum than to raise funds for infrastructure projects in Nagorno-Karabakh, mostly from "different circles of Armenians in the United States." He is on a whirlwind tour: "Detroit Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and maybe Fresno, we are still finalizing our West Coast program," he said. A highlight will be a telethon from Los Angeles on November 23.
Speaking of funds, and of infrastructure, Inner City Press asked about the impact of the Baku - Tbilisi - Ceyhan (BTC) oil pipeline on the conflict.
"Azerbaijan is trying to get maximum political dividends from fact of this pipeline," said Mr. Ghoukasyan. "Since the West is interested in undisruptible oil, Azerbaijan tries to beef up their price for this stability. This emboldens Azerbaijan, making it more aggressive and less willing to come to agreement."
What would an agreement look like?
"In any resolution, we think that Karabakh should have physical land connection with Armenia," said Mr. Ghoukasyan.
At a press conference about the BTC pipeline earlier this year, the Azeri Ambassador told Inner City Press that twenty percent of Azerbaijan's territory has been occupied by Armenia.
On the disputed numbers of displaced people, Mr. Ghoukasyan quipped, "I always suspected they are bad in mathematics." He estimated it, "maximally," to be 13%, and put the number of displaced Azeris at "only" 650,000, rather than the one million figure used by Azerbaijan. Mr. Ghoukasyan admonished, "There is information in books."
And so to the library went Inner City Press. Therein it is recounted that while "in 1989, the Armenian Supreme Council made Nagorno-Karabakh a part of Armenia, this decision was effectively annulled by NKR declaring its independence in 1991. Whether the decision to declare independence was made cooperatively with Yerevan is not yet known."
The UN's role is dismissed: "with one exception the UN never condemned the capture of Lachin, the strategic link between Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh. The UN passed Security Council Resolutions 822, 853, 874 and 884... Each UN resolution reiterated the international body's support for the OSCE Minsk Group process."
Going back, some pundits blame the conflict on Stalin: "he took a part of Armenia and gave it to Azerbaijan, and now so many people are dying while trying to correct his foolish mistake. Now redefining the borders is as painful as cutting someone's flesh when that person is alive."
Fast forward to 1977, when the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast's first secretary from 1973 to 1988, Boris Kevorkov, told visiting journalists that Karabakh Armenians were happily separated from the Armenian republic, saying that "the history of Nagorny (Mountainous) Karabakh is closely interwoven with Azerbaijan's... By contrast, the region is close to Armenia geographically but is separated by high mountains, which were an insuperable barrier in the past for any extensive contacts." (Quoted in Claire Mouradian's "The Mountainouse Karabagh Question").
Also found are rebuttals, including from Azeri poet Bakhtiyar Vahadzade in his 1988 Open Letter, that "since 1828, our people have been divided into two parts," and that both Azeris and Karabakh Armenians "emanate from the same ethnic stock: the Caucasian Albanians." Others say Turkey always takes the Azeri side. There are references to the shoot-down of an Iranian C-130 aircraft in 1994 as it crossed the Azeri-Karabakh line on contact, and of Iran's demand for an apology.
Going back, a volume by Mazda Publishers in Costa Mesa, California entitled "Two Chronicles on The History of Karabakh," contains the full texts of Tarikh-e Karabakh (History of Karabakh) by Mirza Jamal Javanshir and of Karabakh-name by Mariza Adigozal Beg. In the introduction, translator-from-Persian George A. Bournoutian reports that "Armenian historians maintain that all of Karabakh was, at one time, part of the Armenian kingdom and that the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh has had an Armenian majority for several hundred years. Azeri historians assert that the region was never part of Armenia and that the Armenian population arrived there from Persia and the Ottoman empire after the Treaty of Turkmenchay (1828) when, thanks to the Russian policy that favored Christians over Muslims, the Armenians established a majority in what became Nagorno-Karabakh." In a footnote he addresses nomenclature: "Nagorno-Karabakh is the Russian designation. The Armenians call is [sic] Artsakh or Gharabagh and the Azeris Karabag."
Finally, on the question of numbers, Arif Yunosov in "The Migration Situation in CIS Countries" opines that the conflict has caused 353,000 Armenia refugees and 750,000 Azeris -- less than the one million figure used by Azeri President Aliev, but large, and 100,000 larger than acknowledged in the interview. And a more solid figure than Aliev's 20%, but more than was acknowledged, is 13.62 percent. The search for truth continues. If the comparison is to the original, Soviet-defined Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast, it must be noted that NKR is claiming, beyond the Oblast, the territory of Shahumian.
By the end of the interview, Mr. Ghoukasyan was focusing on two regions of the old Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast over which now Azerbaijan has de facto control: Martakert and Martuni. While Mr. Ghoukasyan's point was that these should be subtracted from the 13 percent, they raise a larger question, that of break-aways from break-aways.
The analogy, to Inner City Press, is to the serially-opening or "nesting" Russian dolls. Inside one republic is another, but inside the breakaway is another smaller portion, that either wants to remain with the larger, or to itself be independent. Northern Kosovo comes to mind, and the portion of Abkhazia into which a Tbilisi-based government is trying to relocate.
How small can these Russian dolls become? And how will the UN-debated status of Kosovo, now frozen into 2007, impact or defrost other frozen conflicts? Developing.
On Water, UNDP Talks Human Rights, While Enabling Violations in Africa and Asia, With Shell and Coca-Cola
Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at the UN
UNITED NATIONS, November 9 -- In Chad, nine percent of people have access to improved sanitation, and 42% of people have access to not-unhealthy water. These represent increases from seven and 19 percent, respectively, in 1990. By the United Nations math, Chad is on track to meet the Millennium Development Goal for water, since it has doubled access.
Inner City Press asked UN Development Program Associate Administrator Ad Melkert if UNDP shouldn't set some minimum percentage of a country's population with access to clear water and sanitation, then direct resources until the basis threshold is met. Mr. Melkert answered that the lag, in Chad and elsewhere, is due to inequality, particularly but not only in the slums of cities.
Inner City Press asked Mr. Melkert to address, for example, the criticism by Zimbabwean opponents of the Robert Mugabe regime of UNDP's sponsorship of a Mugabe-led Human Rights Commission. The question has been put to UNDP Communications staff, resulting in generally boilerplate responses. The request that Administrator Kemal Dervis come and answer the question remains outstanding, although Monday his staff indicated that this will happen in December.
On November 6, UNDP Associate Administrator Mr. Melkert said that he declined to address the "specific example of Zimbabwe," but that UNDP has an "interest in economic growth and development" and to "improve life for the poor."
Reminded by Inner City Press of the Mugabe regime's mass eviction of 700,000 people, nearly all of them poor, Mr. Melkert said UNDP tries to make points how the poor could best be served. "Some environments are easier to make the point in," he said. "And in some places we are more successful than others."
In Turkmenistan, which the UN has just named as a major human rights abuser, UNDP praises the government, including on UN Day. In Uzbekistan, UNDP has helped the Karimov regime to collect taxes, and with its Internet programs. While the UNDP report puts Uzbek internet usage at 36%, most web sites are blocked, and Uzbek's surfing and communications are systematically spied on.
Speaking of communications, here are some recent responses from UNDP to questions from Inner City Press.
From: william.orme [at] undp.org
To: Inner City Press
Cc: kemal.dervis [at] undp.org; dujarric [at] undp.org
Sent: Mon, 23 Oct 2006 11:00 AM
Inner City Press question: On Turkmenistan, how does UNDP explain its participation in and statements in connection with Turkmenbashi's celebration earlier this month of partnership with UNDP while Turkmenistan's human rights record, including but not limited to the recent death in custody of a critical journalist, has led even the EU to take action and step back from a trade pact?
UNDP Answer: As you know, the United Nations Development Program is the coordinator of UN system activities in UN member-states in the developing world as well as the leader of long-term UN development efforts in all UN member-states in the developing world. UNDP a permanent presence in all these member-states, which are the sovereign hosts of the locally based projects and international staff of the UN funds, programs and agencies. UNDP's historic commitment over 50 years to its ongoing work in developing nations on the UN system's behalf has never been contingent upon nor construed as an endorsement of the specific policies or practices of specific host governments. The UN agencies which have the mandate of reviewing and responding to reports and incidents of the kind you cite -- UNESCO and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights-- have spoken out clearly forcefully on such cases on behalf of the Secretary-General and the entire UN system.
Beyond excusing UNDP's praise of a massive human rights violator, this response calls into question UNDP's desired future, more powerful role, as proposed by the Coherence Panel on which UNDP's Administrator served, along with the ex-president of Tanzania, Ben Mkapa, Robert Mugabe's hand-picked mediator to deal with the UK.
From another, more elaborated UNDP response, with emphasis added:
Question: The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has just released a human development report in Nigeria that was funded by Shell. Environmental groups have said it is a highly compromised report, given the issues that have surrounded Shell in Nigeria. What standards does the UN have in terms of funding from corporations to fund something like a human development report?
[Belated] Response: UNDP is a development organization dedicated to poverty reduction. In recent years, we have learned that we can best achieve this objective by working in partnership with a broad array of stakeholders including government, communities, civil society and the private sector. This partnership builds on our experience working with extractive companies in China, Venezuela, Kazakhstan, Indonesia and most recently, in Angola.
Among the various development actors in Nigeria, our broad comparative advantages lies in our human development values and neutrality, both of which have translated into trusted relationships with governments, civil society, communities and increasingly, the private sector. Publication of National Human Development Reports as well as participation in national and state strategic planning processes to promote dialogue around human development priorities has reinforced our coordination and advocacy roles. We have also teamed up with donors to gain valuable experience in support of conflict prevention.
The partnership with Shell will allow us to greatly expand our activities in the Delta. Our focus will be on developing a human development agenda in consultation with all the stakeholders in the broad areas of governance, biodiversity, HIV/AIDs and sustainable livelihoods. We see these objectives as unrelated to Shell’s operations and we take no position on their activities. Our role in this partnership, as in any other, is the development, management and implementation of projects together with local governments, civil society and Delta communities, the transparent management of funds, and monitoring and evaluation against our objectives.
Leveraging Shell’s willingness to finance a partnership aligned with UNDP’s mission and core values gives UNDP the very real opportunity to make a tangible improvement in the conditions in the Delta. It will allow us to build a program that involves not just Shell, but all the important stakeholders – communities, civil society, government and the private sector. UNDP’s broad-based stakeholder approach both to defining priorities and to implementing the projects will help improve the development impact of the millions of dollars currently flowing into the Delta...
UNDP's corporate partnerships, apparently overseen by no outside source, include deals with Coca-Cola, which is accused of rogue-like water usage in at least two continents. Human rights, anyone? There's something in the water...
Will UN's Revolving Door Keep Human Rights Lost, Like Bush's Call and WFP Confirmation Questions?
Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at the UN
UNITED NATIONS, November 8 -- The UN's top ranks are clearing out, before any policy on post-employment restrictions are in place. This week Deutsche Bank announced it has hired outgoing UN Under Secretary of Management Chris Burnham.
Wednesday Inner City Press asked Kofi Annan's spokesman whether any post-employment restrictions apply to Mr. Burnham and now Deutsche Bank, and to address the issues raised by a senior UN official going to the main private banker of the leader of Turkmenistan, portrayed as a human rights abuser in a recent UN report. This report describes the "gross and systematic violations of human rights continu[ing] in the country." A/61/489.
Policies are being "elaborated on," the spokesman vaguely said. He was asked, will they not apply to those leaving? Will they apply to Mr. Annan?
"The Secretary-General is not a staff member," the spokesman said. "There is currently no policy on post-employment restrictions at the UN. One is being elaborated."
Inner City Press has obtained a copy of the draft post-employment policy. It proposes that "a former staff member of the [UN], at the Assistant Secretary-General level or above is prohibited from making, with the intent to influence, a communication to or appearance before any staff member [for] two years."
Strikingly, the only "sanction for violation" of this proposed policy would be to "have a note placed in the individual's official status file indicating the nature of the violation and the recommendation against any future employment by the Organization."
And this was the "gold standard" of post-employment restrictions? And as to Mr. Burnham new master, Deutsche Bank - Turkmenbashi, what about the "mainstreaming of human rights" which Kofi Annan has called for?
And what of the transparency that Messrs. Annan and Burnham have called for? There is at the UN apparently a taboo on any questions related to religion, in service of hard ball. The day after Josette Sheeran Shiner's rubber stamp confirmation by the executive board of the World Food Program, Swiss newspapers report that U.S. President George W. Bush called and pressured Jacques Diouf, head of the Food and Agriculture Organization, threatening to cut U.S. funding unless Ms. Sheeran Shiner got the job. Click here for English, here for original French.
Wednesday Inner City Press asked Kofi Annan's spokesman about this call, whether Jacques Diouf let Mr. Annan know of the U.S. interest to the highest levels. "Ask the White House or FAO," the spokesman advised, adding that Mr. Annan "has not had a conversation with the White House in the last two to three weeks." Transcript here. The Nov. 8 Washington Post reports that U.S. officials, presumably UN-based, asked it not to mention Ms. Sheeran Shiner's 20-year affiliation with Sun Myung Moon. Still the White House and FAO can and will be asked.
Inner City Press also Wednesday asked the spokesman:
Inner City Press question: The Government of Serbia has called for Martti Ahtisaari to resign saying that he was engaged in secret negotiations with Albania about the future of Kosovo. So, one, if the UN has responded in any way to that, and two, what is the status of his plan. First one, and then the other.
Spokesman: Mr. Ahtisaari is in charge of the process, he works for the Secretary-General. It’s up to him, to the Secretary-General, to decide on his fate. But it’s clear that the Secretary-General expects Mr. Ahtisaari to continue to lead this process until its conclusion. We had said, and the Secretary-General said recently, that he did not exclude the possibility that these talks would not slip beyond the end of this year, but the discussions are continuing.
Okay, then. Also continuing is the inquiry into the resolution by Belarus and Uzbekistan calling for more "respectful" dialogue on human rights. From Tuesday's noon briefing's transcript:
Spokeswoman: I can check on the status of that, because I know that they have been talking. I’m not sure if it’s been introduced, but I know it’s on the agenda.
Inner City Press question: One part of the resolution says that the country-specific resolution should only be used in case of massive violations related to genocide and ethnic cleansing, and I think that the current GA practice is that there are human rights resolutions on these issues that fall short of that standard. I think the current GA practically there are resolutions issues short of that. I don’t know if the President herself has any view on this -- not necessarily this resolution but on country-specific resolutions that are brought up?
Spokeswoman: I will check on that.
Meanwhile, a senior UN official in a place to know has confirmed to Inner City Press that the Department of Peacekeeping Operations is negotiating with "some of the richest nations on Earth" to make sure the UN doesn't get overcharged for the naval component of UNIFIL off Lebanon. Inner City Press has learned that some are demanding depreciation and other costs for their ships, which they earlier claimed they were contributing. Chief among the chiselers is Germany...
At the UN, Positions Are Up For the Grabbing, Sun's Silence on Censorship, Advisor Grabs for Gun
Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at the UN
UNITED NATIONS, November 3 -- As the UN's Kofi Annan decade enters its final two months, some bail out, some try to sneak in, and some dig in to fight. Some of this is public, some is begrudgingly semi-public, and most is off the radar.
Publicly, the Under-Secretaries-General for Management and for Humanitarian Affairs are both leaving, the former mid-November and the Egeland-er one month later. As Inner City Press has been reporting, Josette Sheeran Shiner is trying to get a five year term at the World Food Program on Kofi Annan's recommendation in his final two months. The Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping, Jean-Marie Guehenno, has said nothing about leaving.
Friday Inner City Press asked Kofi Annan's spokesman to confirm reports that the United States wants a U.S. general to get the UN peacekeeping post. The spokesman declined to answer. Video on UNTV. He also declined on-camera to speak of Washington's campaign to get Sheeran Shiner at WFP. This has reportedly involved reaching out to Ban Ki-Moon, a subject on which the spokesman declined another fine journalist's question.
As to why Ms. Sheeran Shiner is even being considered for a five year term at this time, the spokesman answered Inner City Press' question about Jim Morris' decision to leave. About six months ago, he said, Jim Morris told the UN he would not seek reappointment, and that he would prefer to leave at year's end, and not his full term to April 2007. That at least is the story.
While Amb. Sheeran Shiner was slated to take questions from the press on November 6, as she announces awards to three corporations, Inner City Press was told by the State Department on Friday that now Amb. Sheeran Shiner will not be taking questions at the events, which she will be leaving to attend a "very important meeting." Inner City Press asked if questions could be posed to Amb. Sheeran Shiner after the event (and the important meeting). The State Department assistant spokesman asked, "What would the question be?" Inner City Press declined to be screened in this way.
One intrigue around UN peacekeeping is that if the U.S. gets it, and Japan gets its desired post, Management, then the UK is left out in the cold. Giving the UK the Department of Political Affairs, held by Sir Kieran Prendergast before Ibrahim Gambari, wouldn't wash, with the U.S. holding peacekeeping. Some speculate the UK would the get the humanitarian post. The French, who got peacekeeping in exchange for putting Kofi Annan in, have less leverage now, as evidenced by this week's Ivory Coast resolution.
Another real-world peacekeeping intrigue involves the money being demanded by countries which make up the UNIFIL navy off Lebanon. Inner City Press has been told that some of these countries, including but not limited to Germany, are asking to be paid even depreciation costs for their ships. This would drive the cost of UNIFIL above that of the larger MONUC, the mission in the Congo. It may also explain UN Controller Warren Sach's cryptic comment this week to the GA's Fifth Committee about "the unwelcome likely increase in the Organization's outstanding obligations to Member States that contribute troops and equipment to peacekeeping operations." GA/AB/3767, Nov. 2. Inner City Press asked two UN spokespeople about this on Friday. Video on UNTV. The GA President's Spokeswoman is trying to track this down: increasing obligations for "contribution" of equipment by whom?
UN language that was more inaccurate than cryptic has been identified in the Secretariat's September 1 response to the U.S. Mission on the question of housing subsidies paid by governments to UN officials. The letter, signed by Kofi Annan's chef de cabinet Alicia Barcena, stated that
"as a general rule, no staff member shall accept any honor, decoration, favor, gift or remuneration from any Government. Nevertheless, our rules acknowledge the reality that in certain cases, housing is sometimes provide to United Nations staff by governments or institutions either free or charge or at rents substantially lower than the market rates. In such cases, the staff members concerned are required to disclose this to the Organization and are normally subject to payroll deductions from their salaries, unless an exception is granted by the Secretary-General in very rare instances."
This not accurate. UN Staff Regulation 1.2(j) states unequivocally that "No staff member may accept any honor, decoration, favor, gift, or remuneration from any Government." Staff Regulation 1.2(L) prohibits acceptance of any "favor, gift or remuneration from any non-governmental source." Another less formal UN authority allows subsidies from non-governmental organization only if the Secretary-General grants an exception in writing. And in all of these NGO cases, payroll deductions must be made; there can be no waiver.
On final intrigue, in the nature of a blind item: in the quiet race to be the next S-G's chef de cabinet, which conceding candidate for S-G has his eye on the post?
In a lighter UN moment, on Friday Adolf Ogi, "Special Advisor to the Secretary-General on Sports for Development and Peace and former President of Switzerland," leapt to his feet at a press conference and demonstrated sports. He said repeatedly, we could take the seats out of this room and play soccer right here! Inner City Press asked him about government subsidies for stadiums -- a question he dodged -- and for his position on the proliferation of rifles in Switzerland, a question he didn't dodge at all. He declared, If you are asking if I think all Swiss men should keep their rifles, I do! Video on UNTV. One wondered if the NRA, which has come to the U.S. to lobby against the control of arms large and small, took note of this Special Adviser's exuberant embrace of his rifle.
At week's end we must report that Sun Microsystems, which the UN Office of Sports and Development so lavishly praised in connection with the recent Youth Summit, has yet to answer Inner City Press' written question to explain Sun's position on enabling Internet censorship and surveillance in China and elsewhere. The question was first asked of the UN, back on October 13, given Sun Microsystems' logo in the UN's press materials. Inner City Press was referred to Sun's spokeswoman, and there the matter stands, or sits...
In WFP Race, Josette Sheeran Shiner Praises Mega Corporations from Cornfield While State Spins
Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at the UN
UNITED NATIONS, November 2 -- With the race to head the World Food Program entering at most its final fortnight, the official U.S. candidate Josette Sheeran Shiner has lauded praise on 12 global corporations from Chevron through Coca-Cola.
Those praised include APCO in China, Chevron in Indonesia, Coca-Cola in Mexico, Delta Construction in Vietnam, General Motors in Colombia, Goldman Sachs in Chile, Kerr McGee in Benin, McDonald's in Guatemala, Microsoft in Egypt, Motorola in Iraq, Pfizer in Pakistan, and Sambazon in Brazil.
These twelve companies are the finalists, whittled from 55 nominations, for the U.S. State Department's Award for Corporate Excellence. While all 12 finalists are named in a press release, the four finalists to head the WFP have not been. Whether the WFP race's lack of transparency to date ends up benefiting Ms. Sheeran Shiner is still not known.
On Monday November 6, Amb. Sheeran Shiner will name three winners and presumably take questions. Since it says "interactive," one assumes there'll be a link-up with the Foreign Press Center in New York, as for another Assistant Secretary of State, Jendayi Frazer. It is said that transparency and inter-activity are important.
Part of Ms. Sheeran Shiner's campaign to head WFP has been a four-page brochure, now online (though not inter-active). The first page shows a smiling Josette Sheeran, with a wide field behind here, evocative of the American Midwest. In food security circles, many question the U.S. strategy of placing surplus crops with WFP. Many European nations say it is better to give money. Many developing nations say that the inflow of U.S. crops destroys local production and markets, which the UN Food and Agriculture Organization is supposed to support. There is also the controversy about genetically-modified foods. These are all topics on which the four WFP finalists would face questions, and answer publicly, in a more transparent process.
As to why a five year term's being given, in Kofi Annan's last months, the spokesman on Wednesday said the current WFP head, Jim Morris, is leaving at the end of the year. Since Mr. Morris' term runs through April, Thursday Inner City Press asked when Mr. Morris made known his early departure. Despite a promise of a fast answer to this factual question, as of press time no answer was forthcoming.
L'affaire Shiner was raised in Washington at Wednesday's U.S. State Department press conference. From the transcript:
QUESTION:
While we're up in New York, can you deal with (inaudible) with Josette
Shiner seeking the World Food slot?
(Another question asked, discussed Iran…)
QUESTION: Can we go back to the Shiner?
MR. MCCORMACK: We can go back to the Shiner question.
QUESTION: I'm not sure of the issues. No, they -- she wants the job. Another American is a candidate --
MR. MCCORMACK: And we want her to have the job.
QUESTION:
What about the other American who's --
MR. MCCORMACK: Tony Banbury?
QUESTION:
-- does the program in Asia? Yeah.
MR. MCCORMACK: Well, I think he has put himself forward as an independent
candidate. Usually the way this happens for these kinds of jobs is that a
state will back one candidate. And our candidate for the job, as the
Secretary has said, and she has made phone calls in support of Josette's
candidacy, is Josette Shereen Shiner. And we think she's the right person
for the job. It's not our decision. Secretary General Annan as well as I
think head of the World Food Organization has a say in this. So it's out of
our hands as to who gets selected, but we very strongly support her
candidacy. Tony's a very capable person, a very capable person. He actually
was a colleague of mine over at the NSC over at the White House previously
before he took this job as, I think, Asia -- Director for Asia in the World
Food Program. But the United States Government is backing Josette for the
job.
QUESTION: Is there anything peculiar about funding brochures and such or is that part of the support process?
MR. MCCORMACK: You know, this is very typical in the world of the UN and these kind of UN types of jobs. I think you will find that nominees, candidates for these jobs, will go around and do courtesy calls with every country that they possibly can, a variety of different people, and very often, very often times, more often than not, they'll leave a brochure because essentially it makes the case of this person's qualifications. We have done this before. It's certainly regular practice with us. And it's certainly standard practice within the confines of this UN process.
It should be noted that the UN advertised the WFP opening in The Economist magazine, trolling, it would seem, for "independent candidates." In such a process, one might expect experience, resume and education to prevail. On the latter, it has been pointed out that while for example Mr. Banbury has a graduate degree in international affairs from the Fletcher School of Diplomacy at Tufts and another from Geneva, Ms. Sheeran Shiner lists a B.A.. At WFP, a masters degree is required for any P-1 position.
Others argue that a major job of the head of WFP is fundraising. If so, a transparent process would allow for the question, how successful was Ms. Sheeran Shiner's fundraising at William Bennett's "Empower America" organization? Developing.
A Tale of Two Americans Vying to Head the World Food Program, Banbury and Sheeran Shiner
Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at the UN
UNITED NATIONS, October 27 -- The four-person short list to replace Jim Morris as head of the UN World Food Program includes Tony Banbury, a Democrat who worked in the Bush Administration for a year before rejoining the UN system and the current head of WFP's Asia operation, Inner City Press has learned.
As first reported by Inner City Press on September 29, the Bush Administration's nominee for the WFP post is Josette Sheeran (Shiner), formerly an editor of the Washington Times and a 20-year member, until 1998, of Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church. The two other short listers are Canada's Robert Fowler and Walter Fust. Sources say that many senior figures in the Bush Administration could live with Tony Banbury getting the job, given his strong credentials earned in the aftermath of the Indian Ocean tsunami and the earthquake in Pakistan. They simply couldn't or didn't choose to nominate a Democrat instead of a Republican, particularly a Republican with a history with the Unification Church, a sub-constituency.
Friday, a senior UN official confirmed to Inner City Press that Tony Banbury is on the WFP short list. The list was whittled from eight candidates to four by a five-person panel that included the UN's Deputy Secretary-General Mark Malloch Brown, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Jan Egeland and UNFPA's Thoraya Obaid, and well as two representatives from the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization. Now the finalists will be interviewed by FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf, who is currently in New York. It is widely known that Dr. Diouf does not get along with finalist Robert Fowler who has been serving as Canada's ambassador to the FAO in Rome. Dr. Diouf's views on Walter Fust, are not known. Nor are Dr. Diouf's connections with the Bush Administration although regarding these, the coming decision may speak loudly.
On October 25, Inner City Press asked UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric, as transcribed by the UN:
Question: On the World Food Program (WFP) process, we have heard that there is a shortlist. Is that true? Who is on it?
Spokesman: I have said all I have to say on that, and we expect an announcement in the next couple of weeks.
Inner City Press question: When the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) selected Mr. Guterres they did actually say who was on the shortlist. Is that not going to be done in this case?
Spokesman: The process here is slightly different because as opposed to UNHCR this is not an appointment that goes to the General Assembly. This is an appointment that is made jointly by the Secretary-General and the Director General of the FAO.
Inner City Press question: Will it be a five-year appointment?
Spokesman: My understanding is that it will be.
Concerns have been raised about Kofi Annan making five year appointments now that he remains Secretary-General for only nine more weeks. On September 27 at the UN, before the WFP nomination had become public, U.S. Ambassador John Bolton told reporters that Kofi Annan's appointment of new UN officials would only be okay if these officials' contracts ended "soon after January 1." Video here, at Minute 4:43.
September 29 at the UN, Inner City Press asked Ambassador Bolton if the U.S.'s position is that Josette Sheeran (Shiner) could be given a five-year WFP term even before Kofi Annan leaves the UN in three month. Ambassador Bolton answered that the appointment could be made before January 1, that "the precedents have differed." Video here, from Minute 8:15, the US mission's transcript:
Inner City Press: On the secretary-general transition and the World Food Program looking for a new executive director, I've heard that the U.S. put forward Josette Sheeran Shiner. Is it your position that this should not be done until January 1st or that she could be appointed and given a five-year term prior to that?
Ambassador Bolton: She could be appointed prior to January 1 or thereafter. And the precedent has differed from reappointment to reappointment.
U.S. Ambassador Bolton added that Josette Sheeran Shiner was "the most qualified candidate."
As Inner City Press reported on September 29, open-source research reflects that Josette Sheeran (Shiner) was an active member of Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church from 1975 through at least 1996. After that date, it is reported that she went "into the world," including into William Bennett's Empower America organization and then the U.S. State Department, in order to spread the Unification Church's message and position. Beyond controversial views on abstinence, mass-marriage and other matters, including the UN, these include business ties with and praise of North Korea.
The internal U.S. State Department memo obtained by Inner City Press stated that
"For the past several weeks, we have been working with the White House to search for a highly qualified candidate to succeed Jim Morris as Executive Director of the World Food Programme. We now have an excellent candidate in Ambassador Josette Sheeran (Shiner)... Through the course of a distinguished career in government, business and journalism, Ambassador Sheeran has excelled as a diplomat, humanitarian, business leader and development policy leader."
The reference to journalism is to Ms. Sheeran's tenure as managing editor of the Moon-owned Washington Times.
In that capacity, in 1992 Ms. Sheeran went on an 11-day visit to North Korea, leading up a feature article commemorating the 80th birthday of Kim Il-Sung's 80th birthday. "Even if the sky is falling down on us, there will always be a hole for me to rise up through," said Kim -- a sentence Sheeran-Shiner later recollected, as recounted by the American Prospect, as "this wonderful thing which I printed in the paper."
Sheeran-Shiner's interview with Kim Il-Sung painted him as a "self-confident, reflective elder statesman rather than the reclusive, dogmatic dictator he is usually portrayed as in the West."
Now Kim Il-Sung's son is being portrayed by Ms. Sheeran-Shiner's nominator as a threat to international peace and security. More documents on the North Korea - Moon connection are online here.
Josette Sheeran's first appearance in the media was in Time magazine of November 10, 1975, in an article entitled "Mad About Moon" --
"One typical worried parent is New Jersey's state insurance commissioner James Sheeran, three of whose daughters—Vicki, 25, Jaime, 24, and Josette, 21—are Moon converts. He wants laws to protect people from 'cruel and exotic entrapment of their minds, souls and bodies.' Late one night last August, Sheeran decided to act when Josette, normally compassionate, showed little interest upon learning that her grandmother was in the hospital. He, his wife and a son drove to Moon's school to seek Josette. Fifteen Moon men materialized, a scuffle ensued, and state police arrived amid mutual charges of assault."
In fairness or under the doctrine of equal time, Inner City Press has heard a person who states that she "worked with Ms. Sheeran at the Office of the Untied States Trade Representative" and that "she severed her ties with the Unification Church... do you actually think the State Department's security clearance process" who have passed a Unification Church member?
Well, yes. George H.W. Bush has given speeches extensively praising Sun Myung Moon. But it's duly noted here, this missive from a person who worked with Ms. Sheeran also at the Washington Times, that after 20 years of membership in the Unification Church, it's stated that all ties were then severed. It remains newsworthy, also on the shifting positions on whether Kofi Annnan should be allowed to hand out five-year appointments in the less than three months he has remaining in office. U.S. Amb. Bolton said Annan shouldn't make appointments beyond the end of 2006, then receiving new instructions, said there'd be precedent to give Ms. Sheeran five years right now. Would he and the Bush Administration take the same position on Tony Banbury? We'll see.
WFP insiders have pointed out to Inner City Press that within the U.S. State Department, of Josette Sheeran (Shiner) it is said, "She is no Al Larson," her predessesor as Under-Secretary for Economic Affairs. These WFP sources note that Ms. Sheeran Shiner has no experience in humanitarian operations, or in emergency relief work, in international affairs, or in managing a large, complex, multi-billion dollar agency. One argues, "it would still be possible for Kofi Annan to retain an American for the WFP post and to not agree to the Bush Administration's rather unqualified candidate. After the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina, America learned a lesson: Don't place unqualified political appointees in charge of critical emergency response agencies. The same lesson applies to leadership considerations for the WFP, the global 'first responder' for floods, hurricanes, earthquakes and tsunamis the world over."
Yer doin' a heckuva job, Shinie! Developing.
At the UN, the Unrepentant Blogger Pronk, a Wink on 14 North Korean Days and Silence on Somalia
Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at the UN
UNITED NATIONS, October 27 -- Jan Pronk, the UN's envoy to Sudan who has been declared persona non grata by Sudanese president al-Bashir, was defended Friday by the UN Security Council and Kofi Annan's head of peacekeeper Jean-Marie Guehenno. Inner City Press asked Mr. Pronk to explain his statement that his blog posting about the low morale of the Sudanese army was meant to tell the rebel not to attack the army. Video on UNTV. Mr. Pronk explained that his point was that because of low morale, reinforcement were being called, including the janjaweed.
Inner City Press asked Mr. Guehenno is he is aware of such blogging by the chiefs of any other UN peacekeeping missions. Mr. Guehenno did not directly respond, except to repeat the Secretariat's line, that "blogs are personal." Asked about the al-Bashir government sabotaging and delaying the delivery of armored personnel carriers meant for the African Union force in Darfur, Mr. Pronk said yes, APC are delayed, leading to death. Inner City Press asked Mr. Pronk why he didn't post his views on the official website of the UN Mission to Sudan, UNMIS.org. Mr. Pronk said that the UN has never told him to be quiet. But when Inner City Press earlier asked this same APC question, the response was to "look at Pronk's blog" -- in UN parlance, a link verbale.
The president of the Security Council, Japanese Ambassador Kenzo Oshima, defended Mr. Pronk. Inner City Press asked if any Council members inquired into the envoy-blogging phenomenon. Amb. Oshima answered, no. Video here.
Earlier on Friday, Inner City Press asked Kofi Annan's spokesman if the UN has any comment on its own leaked report that in Somalia, in violation of the UN embargo, there are up to 8000 Ethiopian troops, and 2000 from Eritrea. Video here. From the UN's transcript:
Inner City Press: there are between 6,000 and 8,000 Ethiopian troops in Somalia and 2,000 Eritrean troops. It is a report that has some length, and I was wondering if you can now, after all these months of the United Nations saying it had no idea of what was going on, can you confirm those numbers and what is the United Nations, what does the Secretary-General say given the arms embargo on Somalia?
Spokesman: No, I cannot confirm those; I am sorry, as a matter of policy, I was about to say, we do not comment on leaked or reportedly leaked documents, which we can’t authenticate. We do, however, receive second-hand reports from the parties and the press, and as we've said repeatedly, we are not in a position to verify these reports or comment on any presence of foreign troops in Somalia. The Secretary-General stresses that the solution in Somalia is political and not military, he urges the Somali parties to settle their differences through dialogue and he calls on the international community, especially Somalia's neighbors, to avoid any action that could further aggravate the situation... The issue is that it is not in the mandate of -- the current mandate of the United Nations is given to it by, as it stands now, with this political office, to verify these numbers. The message to all the neighbors is to avoid any action that would further aggravate the solution. And, obviously, furthermore, I would add, the message is also for all countries to respect and abide by the embargo currently in place.
Question: There is a United Nations group of four experts who are supposed to report...
Spokesman: Those experts, I am talking about the political mission led by Mr. Fall, the experts work and report for the Security Council. They come out with the regular reports. You may want to see if you can get in touch with them, to see if they have anything to say.
But these four Somalia experts have already declined to speak, at least until they brief the Security Council. When this will happen, no one is saying.
Inner City Press also asked why the UN has said nothing about Morocco's barring of journalists from Western Sahara, and similar crackdowns on press freedom in the Democratic Republic of Congo, in the run-up to Sunday's election. The spokesman had nothing on either topic. By contrast, the spokeswoman for the General Assembly president had an answer to a previous Inner City Press question:
"The Peacebuilding Commission has only one reporting structure. It submits an annual report to the General Assembly and the Assembly is expected to hold an annual debate to review that report. And, that's the only real structure. What I think might have been a concern was the fact that the resolution which established it does, in fact, say that, on issues of relevance to the Security Council or to ECOSOC, that information should be shared. It says, for example, that the Commission would provide advice to the Council at its request. It's the same for ECOSOC -- the Commission would provide advice, particularly on countries in transitional recovery towards development and anything that would be of relevance to that issue. So, it's not that it sets up extra layers of bureaucracy, which I think was Sierra Leone's concern."
On the sidelines outside the Security Council, the chairman of the North Korea sanctions committee, Slovakian Amb. Burian, said that although the deadline to agree on one of the sanctions list is October 28, agreement by Monday, October 30 at noon will be considered compliant. Since there is no court to oversee or review the Security Council's work, anything goes, apparently...
At the UN, Literacy Losses in Chad, Blogless Pronk and Toothless Iran Resolution, How Our World Turns
Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at the UN
UNITED NATIONS, October 26 -- On the topic of literacy, a 390-page study was released at the UN on Thursday. On page 201, it is reported that in the African nation of Chad, adult literacy stands at 25.7%. The figure has declined from 1990. Inner City Press asked two officials of UNESCO to explain this Chadian tragedy. "Increases in population," said UNESCO's Nicholas Burnett. "And not enough schools opening."
Earlier in Thursday's briefing, Inner City Press asked what the UN is doing about Niger's move to expel tens of thousands from Diffa Province back to Chad. Click here for one report. "It is something UNHCR is aware of," the spokesman answered.
"But has the UN told Niger not to do it?"
"They're trying to gather more information," the spokesman answered. "I can't go beyond that."
UNHCR has been aware for some time of the shooting of Tibetans trying to flee into Nepal. Publicly, however, UNHCR has said little. Inner City Press has asked UNHCR in Geneva to explain its position.
Another topic the UN says it will now consider is the opposition to UNESCO's plan to name Sri Lanka's former President, Chandrika Kumaratunga, to a 14-month term of a Special Consultant to UNESCO on Education for All, the topic of Thursday briefing at UN Headquarters. Opposition has arisen given Mrs. Kumaratunga's human rights record. Click here for more.
Inner City Press' question to Kofi Annan's spokesman about how Special Consultants are selected was referred to the two UNESCO officials in attendance. They indicated that UNESCO's executive director Koichiro Matsuura may not have been aware of these issues and that they will not look into it. One of them said wistfully, "And I thought it would be a quiet weekend." Not in Chad.
Nor in the Congo. Days before the run-off election, the UN's apparently non-blogging envoy to the DR Congo, William Lacy Swing, met with Jean-Pierre Bemba about an upcoming campaign rally. Front-runner Joseph Kabila has denied the UN access to one of his camps to check for weapons. Not a good sign.
While many correspondents, including that of Inner City Press, took as a sign of Jan Pronk imminent defenestration -- figurative, of course -- the comments of Kofi Annan Wednesday late afternoon, that he would make his decision only after speaking with Mr. Pronk, as of 4 p.m. Thursday it appears Pronk will live to blog another day. At least one additional day. Japanese Ambassador Oshima let it be known that the Security Council will meet Friday on Sudan. Head of UN peacekeeping Jean-Marie Guehenno will be there. One assumes that Mr. Pronk might make an appearance as well. He was seen entering the UN at 10:30 on Thursday and heading to the basement. One wag joked that he might well be blogging from the public access computers, a sort of Stations of the Cross, the 12 steps by which he may be forced or eased out.
Inner City Press posed the riddle of Jan Pronk to UN lightening rod Jean Ziegler -- who is special rapporteur on food but also punching bag for the right wing, not without reason, for his role in the Gaddafi Human Rights Prize -- at Prof. Ziegler's press conference on Thursday afternoon. Ziegler's first response was that Pronk is a socialist, then a good man, only doing his job. Video on UNTV. Ziegler had previously called for UN intervention into Darfur without Sudanese consent, a position which ironically the detractors of his Lebanon report would otherwise embrace. He cannot be pigeonholed, this Jean Ziegler. He denounced Sudan's al-Bashir government as well as Israel's use of cluster bombs in Lebanon.
Inner City Press ended with a legal question, on whether Mr. Ziegler believes that the Geneva Conventions require that victims of conflict be provided adequate food resources, and if so, by whom. Mr. Ziegler ignored this question, choosing instead to explain how the UN Human Rights Council rejected Israel's argument that the Geneva Convention protocols did not apply to this summer's conflict, since the non-state actor, Hezbollah, was in another state. For its rejection of Israel's position, Ziegler praised the Human Rights Council, a plaudit which is strikingly rare.
Also on the legal beat, but in Liberia and not Wall Street, Ms. Leymah Gbowee on Thursday explained the recent improvements in the Liberian law of rape. Video on UNTV. Inner City Press asked about an UNMIL report chiding the country for not prosecuting rape. Ms. Gbowee said the commitment is there, just not the resources. She also called for the lifting of the UN's diamond sanctions.
On the beat of most pressing interest to the neo-liberal press (we're channeling Jean Ziegler here), the draft resolution on Iran leaked to some of the media on Thursday. It is sure to be subject to fuller exegesis elsewhere. What leaps out as unique is the carve out in Paragraph 14 for sales, mostly by Russia, to the Bushehr I Civil Nuclear Power Plant. Even with this, Russia is chafing. Where now is the American firebrand John Bolton? Why does Sudan, as Inner City Press reported yesterday and got on camera today, lavish praise on U.S. envoy Andrew Natsios? Tune in tomorrow, for the next episode in this Inner City Press series, How Our World Turns...
At the UN, Silence from UNDP on Cyprus, from France on the Chad-Bomb, Jan Pronk's Sudan Blog
Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press of the UN
UNITED NATIONS, October 20 -- What is the UN's policy on free speech? The policies differ in the UN Development Program, which praises repressive regimes in Turkmenistan and Zimbabwe while criticizing the legislature of Cyprus, and in the Secretariat, which has discussed but not acted as its envoy to Sudan Jan Pronk has run a "personal" blog about events in Darfur.
Jan Pronk's blog hit the world news on Friday, as the al-Bashir government has declared him persona non grata for a mid-October post, still available online, reporting two losses by the Sudanese army to the rebels of the National Redemption Front, NRF, who are not signatories to the Darfur Peace Agreement.
Pronk's blog has been an open secret within UN Headquarters; UN staff have referred reporters to the site for information not available on the UN Mission to Sudan website. As senior peacekeeping officials at the UN have said privately that more international criticism is needed of the rebels, and not only of the government, for atrocities in Darfur, the UN has not made this point overly public, perhaps concerned of falling afoul of the mobilized concern symbolized by George Clooney's recent UN appearance. As Inner City Press reported on October 18, nuanced or contrarian voices on Darfur are found among those above or outside the fray, like 92 year old, long-time UN hand Sir Brian Urquhart, or for example on Jan Pronk's blog.
On the topic of blogs, Inner City Press on Friday asked Kofi Annan's spokesman was asked at his regular press conference whether the UN has a policy on blogs, given that UN employees have been fired for writing unauthorized books about such topics as romance amid humanitarian missions. "We have not kept up with technology," the spokesman acknowledged. Pressed by other reporters to stand behind or renounce the content of Jan Pronk's blog, the spokesman repeated again and again, "it is a personal blog." He was asked for a more definitely answer; we'll see.
S-G & Pronk
Also still unanswered are a series of questions Inner City Press has put to the UN Development Program, UNDP. Two weeks ago, Inner City Press asked UNDP's main spokesman William Orme for an update on a UNDP-funded involuntary disarmament program in Uganda which, after Inner City Press' reporting, was suspended earlier this year, see www.InnerCityPress.com/ungc062906.html. In two weeks, UNDP has not provide an answer, despite cajoling from Kofi Annan's spokesman's office, which has repeatedly told Inner City Press that answers would be forthcoming and the delays would be "ironed out."
On October 18, the spokesman said, "I don’t have any of the details of this event involving UNDP and Turkmenistan. I know that you and UNDP have had some issues and you’ve had some trouble talking to them. We will try to negotiate some sort of communication channel between you and UNDP, so you can get your answers to your questions."
For the record, Inner City Press has taken the same approach to UNDP as other agencies of the UN and of governments, and even corporations: questions about issues, and a request that answers be provided in less than two weeks, and without agita or insults.
The questions about UNDP has Inner City Press has asked in the past months have included UNDP's public praise of repressive governments in Uzbekistan, Zimbabwe and Turkmenistan, UNDP's funding to the judiciary of Sudan's al-Bashir government, and UNDP's acceptance of funding from Shell to produce a report about the Niger Delta. UNDP's spokesman has expressed outrage that certain questions have been asked, and has then refused to answer any more questions. Meanwhile UNDP's director Kemal Dervis has not appeared for a press conference in the UN Headquarters building for fourteen months.
UNDP / UNPOS Controversial Funding in Cyprus: Issue Raised
Friday the issue of UNDP's controversial funding of materials in Cyprus supporting "the Annan plan" was raised to Mr. Annan's spokesman Stephane Dujarric. Video's on UNTV, and for a pro-UNDP narration of the Cyprus issue, click here. There are check stubs reflecting payment to journalists, and requests in to the U.S. State Department. Inner City Press will be following these documents where they lead and, wider, the UN Office of Project Services.
In the Cyprus controversy, the activity was undertaken by the UNDP-administered UN Office of Project Services, UNOPS, with money provided directly to UNOPS by USAID, an arm of the U.S. State Department. A wider question raised is what standards this UNDP-administered UNOPS has.
Friday at the UN on these UNDP-Cyprus issues, Kofi Annan's spokesman Stephane Dujarric said that "Bill Orme will get back to you." Skepticism was expressed by another reporter covering the Cyprus issue -- "UNDP never answers questions," he told Inner City Press -- and later by another longtime UN correspondent, who recounts a vituperative response by the same Bill Orme, which he told Kofi Annan's spokesman about. If there are special issues, they are UNDP's lack of standards, and lack of accountability and transparency.
At dusk fell Friday on Turtle Bay, UNDP's Bill Orme was seen inside the UN Spokesman's glass-walled office. Despite this time spent trying to excuse, explain or mischaracterize UNDP's delay in providing answers and basic information, not even an answer to the Uganda disarmament question posted two weeks ago in writing was provided. There is something wrong at UNDP, and it is noteworthy that the Secretariat purports to be unable to address it. This is a developing story.
Diamond Sanctions in Liberia - and Ivory Coast?
The Security Council on Friday issued a presidential statement on diamond sanctions on Liberia, urging the Liberian Government to take steps so as to join the Kimberly Process. Inner City Press asked Japanese Ambassador Kenzo Oshima if the Council will act on reports of blood diamonds from Ivory Coast; Amb. Oshima said they will, at some unspecified future date.
Also Friday at the UN, French Defense Minister Michele Alliot-Marie took a half-dozen questions from reporters. Video's on UNTV. Inner City Press asked two questions: for France's view on the European Union force's plan to pull out of the Democratic Republic of Congo on November 30, even before the president to be elected on October 29 is sworn in, and for an explanation of the legality of the bomb France dropped in Chad earlier this year. Minister Alliot-Marie answered only the Congo question, implying that while the pull-out could start on November 30, it could take a month, and thus not be completed before the presidential swearing-in. She did not answer the Chad question, although a French general who accompanied her smiled at Inner City Press for the rest of the press conference. Perhaps that was the answer: we did it because we could. Minister Alliot-Marie also said, about Ivory Coast, that France has few economic ties remaining with its former colony. One wag in the audience muttered, "Not by choice," and noted that China has largely replaced France as economic partner in Ivory Coast and elsewhere in Africa, including Chad.
Finally for this end-of-week report, Rogelio Pfirter, Director-General of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons briefed both the General Assembly and reporters on Friday. The materials he passed out stated that six countries have declared they have chemical weapons: Russia, the U.S., Albania, Libya, India and "an unidentified State party." Inner City Press asked Mr. Pfirter to explain the process for a State holding chemical weapons to have its identity concealed by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. Mr. Pfirter said it was agreed to, and that this unnamed state is performing well. Mr. Pfirter went on to denounce North Korea, and to dodge a question about Paragraph 8 of the UN Security Council's recent Resolution 1718. More to follow, we're sure, in coming days.
Russia's Vostok Battalion in Lebanon Despite Resolution 1701, Assembly Stays Deadlocked and UNDP Stays Missing
Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at the UN
UNITED NATIONS, October 19 -- In South Lebanon there are only Lebanese and UN troops, said Major-General Alain Pellegrini, Force Commander of the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) on Thursday. While reporters questioned him about still-alleged weapons smuggling, incursions by Israel and possible anti-aircraft responses by UNIFIL, another question arose. Inner City Press asked, do the soldiers who Russian army engineers brought with them to Lebanon as security comply with Resolution 1701?
No, said Maj.-Gen. Pellegrini, not if they are in South Lebanon.
On October 4, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov announced that "Security will be provided by two protection units... composed of experienced professional soldiers from two battalions, Vostok and Zapad, that belong to the 42nd division in the republic of Chechnya."
The Vostok battalion, beyond being implicated in human rights abuses in the Avar village of Borozdinovskaya, in September 2006 in St. Petersburg operated as a shakedown squad for one party to a dispute about a meat packing plant and the land beneath. Now they are in Lebanon. But where?
On October 12, Inner City Press had asked Kofi Annan's spokesman, as transcribed by the UN:
Inner City Press question: Russia sent to Lebanon troops it used in Chechnya for something called the (inaudible) Battalion. Various human rights groups have said they are widely accused of human rights abuses and should not be part of the multinational force in Lebanon. I don't know if the United Nations has any comment on that. And also on Anna Politkovskaya's report, which since her assassination has been published and acknowledges torture in Chechnya, whether Louise Arbour [High Commissioner for Human Rights] is going to look at that report or do anything about it.
Spokesman: You
have to ask Louise Arbour on the journalist who was killed; I think we already
spoke from here. And on the issue of the Russian troops I don't have any
specific information, and of course as a matter of rule, we do expect any troops
that participate in United Nations operations to uphold the highest standards.
Question: (inaudible).
Spokesman: That is something I would have to talk to Department of Peacekeeping
Operations about. But that would be the responsibility of Member States to
provide us with that information. [The Spokesman later clarified that Russian
troops were not part of the United Nations Peacekeeping Force. Their presence
is part of a bilateral agreement between Russia and Lebanon.]
But can, via a bilateral agreement, troops be introduced into South Lebanon? Maj.-Gen. Pellegrini on Thursday said "no." Developing.
Also at Thursday's briefing by Kofi Annan's spokesman, Inner City Press asked if the Secretariat has any response to the Ethiopian Prime Minister's public acknowledgement that there are Ethiopian troops in Somalia. The spokesman repeated a previous, generic call for all parties to respect the UN arms embargo. But while there are certainly other violators, when a head of state says publicly, to his country's parliament, that he is violating a UN arms embargo, shouldn't more than the usual platitudes be deployed?
The UN General Assembly, meanwhile, continued Thursday morning with round after round of voting between Venezuela and Guatemala for a single two-year seat on the Security Council. The results are barely changing, and reporters and diplomats have started asking what the president of the General Assembly will do, or asking what her predecessor Jan Eliason might have done. The current president of the GA left Wednesday afternoon and on Thursday gave a speech in Toronto. In New York, the GA is being portrayed as a "theater of the absurd." In the stakeout area outside the GA, Guatemala's representative said he would prefer a single vote in the morning, and one in the afternoon, and that he'll welcome two days without voting next Monday and Tuesday. He'd previously echoed U.S. Ambassador John Bolton is saying that if Venezuela was "honorable" and followed past practice, Venezuela would drop out, since it is behind 105 to 78.
But at the noon briefing, two other precedents were raised. In 1960, Poland and Turkey resolved a similar stand-off by agreeing to each take one year of the two-year term. And in 2003, Brazil took two years, followed by Argentina for two years. Neither party in these two cases stood down. Whether the vote tally was closer has been asked of the GA President's spokesperson. We'll see.
At Wednesday's noon briefing, Kofi Annan's spokesman called it "unfair" to say that UNDP director Kemal Dervis had dodged the press:
Inner City Press question: About Turkmenistan. There was a conference this week with UNDP and Turkmenistan. UNDP praised the country and its Government. There's an SG report out, on human rights, and the EU has just refused to ratify a trade agreement on human rights grounds and there's a new law prohibiting marriages with foreigners and the killing of journalists. My question is, what is the connection? The SG's report on Turkmenistan, is this communicated to UNDP? How is it decided with agencies engage with...? UNDP on its web site said they advise Turkmenistan Government agencies. If you have something to say, I'd like to hear it, or at long last have UNDP come to this room.
Spokesman: I don't have any of the details of this event involving UNDP and Turkmenistan. I know that you and UNDP have had some issues and you've had some trouble talking to them. We will try to negotiate some sort of communication channel between you and UNDP, so you can get your answers to your questions. The reports of the Secretary-General are obviously public documents and, of course, available and known to all agencies and UN country teams. But I don't have the details of this specific event you are talking about.
Inner City Press question: Shashi Tharoor, in this room, said that Kemal Dervis, Head of the UNDP, was going to appear by video, but something happened and he was in Rome. I've never actually seen a UNDP person come and brief anyone here.
Spokesman: That would be unfair, because there have been people here. Mr. Dervis has been here and briefed the press. That is a bit of an unfair assessment.
On Thursday Inner City Press posited that Mr. Dervis has not appeared for a press conference in Secretariat Room 226 since August 2005, fourteen months ago. Giving the questions that are building up, about UNDP's engagement with repressive regimes from Turkmenistan to Zimbabwe to Sudan, isn't it time for Mr. Dervis to take questions? Or for his spokesman William Orme to answer simple written questions in less than two weeks? We'll see.
As Turkmenistan Cracks Down on Journalists, Hospitals and Romance, UNDP Works With the Niyazov Regime
Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at the UN
UNITED NATIONS, October 18 -- The European Union reacted to the torture murder of Turkmen journalist Ogulsapar Muradova while in state custody, and other excesses by Turkmenistan’s Saparmurat Niyazov, by declining the invitation to enter a trade agreement with the Central Asian coungtry. The UN Development Program has taken a different approach, and recently offered praise of Niyazov's government.
Today's Turkish Daily News quotes Niyazov that "for some years the state structures and public organizations of Turkmenistan have successfully realized joint programs and projects in collaboration with such organizations as the UNDP, UNICEF, UNESCO and many others."
UNESCO, it should be noted, recently "voiced grave concern at the death of Ogulsapar Muradova in jail in Ashgabat," the capital of Turkmenistan. The UN agency's press release, No. 2006-116, cited Reporters Without Borders that "Ms Muradova's children identified Ms Muradova's body in the morgue of Ashgabat on 14 September. Witnesses are reported to have seen a head wound and many other marks on the rest of her body."
A month after Ms. Muradova's body was identified in the morgue, UNDP's resident coordinator in Turkmenistan Mr. Richard Young told two hundred people at a conference on UN - Government of Turkmenistan cooperation that "as a member of the United Nations, Turkmenistan recognizes the importance of working together to meet concrete targets for advancing development. National ownership is a key to achieving the Millennium Development Goals and adhering to global human rights values." The quote is from a write-up provided by the UN System in Turkmenistan. The write-up contained no criticism of Niyazov or his regime.
It is not clear what "national ownership" the UN's Richard Young was referring to. In recent years, Niyazov has closed all hospitals outside of the capital, telling the BBC, "Why do we need such hospitals? If people are ill, they can come to Ashgabat."
Niyazov, who has called himself Turkmenbashi, Father of All Turkmen, has also closed all libraries, including those in the capital, on the grounds that "nobody reads books or go to libraries".
In fact, the main book taught in schools in Turkmenistan is one written by Niyazov himself, called Ruhknama. Niyavoz has said Ruhknama, sometimes spelled Ruhnama, "was issued to eliminate all shortcomings." It is available in 22 languages on the Turkmenistan government website, here. A UN staffer who has worked for the UN system in Turkmenistan (and who has read Rukhnama) tells Inner City Press that many of the UN offices in Ashkabat use the government's web servers, which block content objectionable to Niyazov and presumably record and register the communications traveling through them. (The UN staff asked not to be named, as for now still a UN employee.)
Like the Karimov government in Uzbekistan, which UNDP also assists in a range of ways from tax collection to help with open source software, Niyazov is cracking down on and thinning the ranks of non-governmental organizations. Reportedly the human rights group Arkadag "has files full of the most diverse explanations they have received about why they are being turned down – a misplaced comma here, a wrongly ordered paragraph there, or a demand for details of all rank-and-file members even though the law stipulates that only the board members need to be named...Re-registration is also a problem for existing NGOs, in the wake of the Law on Public Associations passed in 2003." A more recent law restricts the ability of citizens of Turkmenistan to marry foreigners.
At UN headquarters on Wednesday, Inner City Press asked Kofi Annan's spokesman Stephane Dujarric about these laws, and to explain the contradiction between UNESCO's and even the Secretary-General's own denunciations of the Turkmenistan government's human rights record and UNDP's statement, on its dedicated Turkmenistan website, www.undptkm.org, that "UNDP provides advisory services to selected government agencies in improvement of institutional and legal frameworks for economic and financial management and social protection, statistical capacity development." Video here.
The spokesman has indicated that while this is a good question, it should be answered by UNDP, rather than the Secretariat. The question was asked at noon, but as of six p.m. no response of any kind had been received. We note that UNDP has now delayed two weeks in providing an update on its previously announced de-funding of violent disarmament in the Karamoja region of Eastern Uganda, and has also delayed in responding to Inner City Press' written request for comment on recent testimony to the Fifth Committee on A/61/5 Add.1, on "UNDP's failure to complete monthly bank account reconciliations," "internal control weaknesses present in the implementation process of UNDP's enterprise resource planning (ERP) system" and "the adverse and qualified opinions on project auditors on the implementation of UNDP program expenditures executed by governments."
To be fair to UNDP, here is another UN agency providing unexplained funding to Turkmenistan's government -- UN/DESA Division for Social Policy and Development providing technical cooperation funds to the Niyazov regime. Other supporters include Deutsche Bank, Turkmenbashi's private banker, and the French construction firm Bouygues, to build another palace. Thus is Turkmenbashi provided UN technical assistance to further the Millennium Development Goals. Developing...
At the UN, North Korea Sanctions Agreed On, Naval Searches and Murky Weapons Sales
Byline: Matthew R. Lee of Inner City Press at the UN
UNITED NATIONS, October 14, 3:20 p.m. -- "Six days after the North Korean test, the passage of a Security Council resolution is imminent," U.S. Ambassador John Bolton told reporters just after noon on Saturday. By one o'clock Amb. Bolton emerged with Chinese Ambassador Wang to announce a vote by 1:30. "What led to the deal?" a reporter shouted.
"Good diplomacy," Amb. Bolton deadpanned. Then he and Amb. Wang ambled north along the UN's second story hallway, surrounded by security guards.
Update of 3:15 p.m. -- in serial stakeout interviews following the Council's 15-0 vote, North Korea's Ambassador called the resolution "gangster-like," then strode down the hall, ignoring the questions shouted after him. Chinese Amb. Wang called the cargo inspection language "watered down." Amb. Bolton deadpanned that resolutions are binding.
Inner City Press asked Argentine Ambassador Mayoral if this can really be called a resolution -- if it has been resuelto, in Spanish -- since it leaves a 14 day window to make final decisions. Video here. Amb. Mayoral said Council President Oshima will decide how to use the 14 days. On this question of putting off finalizing what can and cannot be transferred to North Korea for 14 days, Russian Ambassador Churkin explained that even earlier today, he was pointing out to other delegations some unintended consequences of the proposed lists. After declining to answer Inner City Press' question about Georgia, Amb. Churkin also panned recent U.S. legislation which purports to cover other countries on transfers to both Iran and North Korea. Video here. He quickly added that he was not connecting those two countries. The scuttlebutt is that the U.S. will try to make the coming week all about Iran. Others are focused on the Venezuela - Guatemala vote(s) for Security Council membership, slated of Monday. Watch this space.
Update of 1:59 p.m. -- Chinese Amb. Wang, speaking after the 15-0 adoption of the resolution, now named Resolution 1718, said that China does not approve of cargo inspection and urges nations to avoid provoking North Korea. Apparently, the phrase "as necessary" in the resolution can be read any number of ways.
1:37 p.m. update -- The new Paragraph 8(a)(ii) puts off for 14 days a decision on the range of "items, materials, equipment, good and technology" which can't be transferred the North Korea. A UN diplomat explained that "Russia is not a party to the Australia list" [in the resolution, referred to via document S/2006/816] and so "we had to cut them a break." The scope of this loophole is in the process of being explored -- watch this space.
Another U.S. diplomat provided further details: the most recent sticking point has been cargo inspections. The diplomat emphasized that "as necessary" would mean to nearly always inspect at this point, given the grounds for suspicious that North Korea is seeking imports to further its nuclear weapons program.
"What about the annex?" a reporter shouted out.
"There is no annex," the U.S. diplomat replied. Rather, the draft resolution refers to other UN documents that list the prohibited materials.
The run-up to the vote demonstrated again that it is a five-member Council. The Tanzanian Ambassador spoke with reporters about a draft he'd seen at 7 p.m. on Friday, before the Permanent Five members' two-hour meeting on Saturday morning.
The Ambassador of Ghana was stopped by reporters but said, "I don't know anything, they haven't told me anything."
Greel Ambassador Adamantios Vassilakis, meanwhile, lost $5.10 in the automated food machine in the Security Council foyer by choosing, after paying, to open a box that was empty. Next to it, in a still-locked box, was the sandwich the Ambassador wanted. Amb. Vassilakis did a full rotation and tried to get at the sandwich. But for $5.10 you only get to open one box -- even if it's empty. And so it goes at the UN.
At the UN, Georgia Speaks of Ethnic Cleansing While Russia Complains of Visas Denied by the U.S.
Byline: Matthew R. Lee of Inner City Press at the UN
UNITED NATIONS, October 13 -- In the blizzard of words accompanying Friday's six-month extension of the UN's observer mission to Georgia, several strange factual disputes, some of them surreal, were left unresolved. Before the passage of the resolution, Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin had said that a person he called the foreign minister of Abkhazia had been denied a visa to come to New York, and that the U.S. embassy in Moscow had tried to link granting the visa with Russia accepting changes to the draft resolution it had put forward.
Inner City Press asked Ambassador Churkin, after the resolution's passage, if this individual might still be coming to New York to brief the Security Council in a so-called Arria formula meeting. No, Amb. Churkin said.
Then will Russia complain to the Host County Committee of the UN General Assembly?
Amb. Churkin said that yes, Russia would be filing such a complaint. Video here. Venezuela recently complained about the detention of its foreign minister at JFK airport, a complaint echoed by Sudan and supported by such countries as Mali and Belarus. Click here for Inner City Press' story, Axis of Airport.
Inner City Press asked U.S. Ambassador John Bolton to address Amb. Churkin's statement about this gambit by the U.S. embassy in Moscow. Video here. From the transcript provided by the U.S. mission:
Inner City
Press: On Georgia, Ambassador Churkin said that the Abkhaz foreign ministry
called him, a person from Abkhazia. Was the U.S. embassy in Moscow didn't
give him a visa in exchange for somehow changing the language of the
resolution on Georgia -- is that your understanding of what happened? He
said it right here.
Ambassador Bolton: I have -- yeah, you know, I have no idea what that's
about.
Sources tell Inner City Press, however, that not only had Amb. Churkin made his statement about the visa in a televised interview which the U.S. State Department presumably monitors, but also that the visa issue had been discussed in the Security Council consultations prior to Amb. Bolton's above-quoted answer. This followed:
Inner City Press: And was there any linkage between the two issues, you think, for the U.S. or Russia, between the language of today's Georgia resolution and the North Korea resolution?
Ambassador Bolton: Certainly not for the United States. I'll let others speak for themselves.
Inner City Press asked Kofi Annan's spokesman if the UN had any reaction to Russia's allegation that the U.S. blocked this visa and tried to gain negotiating advantage in the Security Council. That sounds like a bilateral issue between the two countries, the spokesman answered. Video here.
Inner City Press asked the spokeswoman for the General Assembly president what action has been taken on Venezuela's complaint, and to be told if and when Russia files a complaint. We'll see.
On the Georgian side, the country's ambassador Irakli Alasania answered a half-dozen questions from Inner City Press, video here. Among other things Amb. Alasania said that attempts by a Permanent Five members whom he left unnamed to link the move toward independence of Kosovo to a similar status for Abkhazia are "troubling." He acknowledged that Javier Solana has spoken publicly about the linkage. Amb. Alasania repeated his call that the peacekeeping force in Georgia by transitioned from Russian troops to UN blue helmets.
Amb. Alasania said that Georgia has raised the issue of the treatment of Georgian in Russia to the UN General Assembly's Third Committee. (Inner City Press has asked the spokeswoman for the GA President for an update on this.) He spoke of ethnic cleansing and military provocation, and disputed Russian Amb. Churkin's statement that the UN has found impermissible Georgian artillery in the Kodori Gorge.
Amb. Alasania brought with him an individual he called the "Head of Government of the Autonomous Republic of Abkhazia, Georgia," Malkhaz Akishbaia. Inner City Press asked Mr. Akishbaia how he had gotten his visa to come. Amb. Alasania cut in to answer the question, that they hadn't had any problems. Mr. Akishbaia told Inner City Press that his government has relocated from Tblisi to the Kodori Gorge, with a staff of some 20 people. A Georgian mission staffer promised again to provide Inner City Press with evidence of the money laundering in the parts of Abkhazia over which Georgia has no control; we'll see.
At the UN, Deference to the Congo's Kabila and Tank-Sales to North Korea, of Slippery Eels and Sun Microsystems
Byline: Matthew R. Lee of Inner City Press at the UN
UNITED NATIONS, October 13 -- "If it's all night, it's all right." U.S. Ambassador Bolton said this phrase with relish to a gaggle of reporters at 6 p.m. on Friday. While the reference was to the still-pending Security Council resolution response to North Korea's nuclear test six days ago, the night-right rhyme is from a lyric sung by the Godfather of Soul, James Brown.
Heard on the grapevine is that Russia's opposition or delay springs from the inclusion of tanks in the list of weapons it could not sell to North Korea. A U.S. diplomat said Russia's opposition on Friday afternoon started out as technical, then became more substantive and intransigent. Amid reporters' questions about the draft resolution's provisions for searching North Korean ships and barring the sale to North Korea of armaments listed in the resolution's still not firm annex, no one asked for John Bolton's view on another James Brown lyric, "Say it loud, I'm black, I'm proud."
A hour after being confirmed by the General Assembly as the next Secretary-General, Ban Ki-Moon held a 20-minute press conference. He took only six questions; it was not clear if any of the questions were answered. A question about Africa was left entirely unresponded-to. (See below in this Report.)
So to at Kofi Annan's spokesman's noon briefing. In response to two questions about the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the spokesman said that the DRC is a sovereign nation, not run by the UN. From the transcript:
Inner City Press question: There is criticism of the Kabila Government replacing two ministers with military personnel, the Minister of the Interior and the Governor of Kinshasa. I know Mr. Gambari is there. On that or the previous things I’ve asked you on Mr. Bemba’s helicopter, has he spoken on these issues?
Spokesman: The Government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo is a sovereign Government. The helicopter is for the Congolese Government to settle. It is my understanding that the helicopter was provided to Mr. Bemba in his capacity of Vice-President. Obviously, Mr. [William Lacy] Swing has been trying to smooth the relations between Mr. Bemba and Mr. Kabila, but the issue of the helicopter is not one, as far as I understand, that we are getting directly involved in. On the issue of ministers, once again, it is the prerogative of the Government to appoint its ministers. The Congo is not a UN-administered territory.
This hasn't stopped the UN Secretariat and its envoy from routinely exhorting the Congolese to remain calm, to disarm, to eschew hate speech and the like. But when Joseph Kabila, three weeks before the run-off election, puts his military staffers in control of the Ministry of the Interior and the governorship of Kinshasa, the UN then has no comment, out of respect for sovereignty. Even on the open question of Mr. Kabila not having fulfilled his previous pledge to replace his opponent's destroyed helicopter, the UN has no comment. Thus even in a disarmed Kinshasa is ammunition given to those Congolese who allege that the UN has spent half a billion dollar merely to re-anoint Joseph Kabila.
Speaking of money's ability to talk, Friday afternoon as part of a briefing about the UN Global Youth Leadership Summit, the high-tech company Sun Microsystem was presented as a UN partner, for sponsoring a web site for the summit. Inner City Press asked how Sun Microsystems was selected to partner with the UN, and whether Sun was asked, as Intel was recently asked by Inner City Press, what safeguards it has in place not to use conflict coltan from the Congo. Video here, from Minute 31:24. Sun was described as a long-term UN partner. But there are more questions: Sun is known to have assisted for Internet blocking and surveillance both China and Myanmar. Global Compact, anyone?
UN Envoy Makes Excuses for Gambian Strongman, Whitewashing Fraud- and Threat-Filled Election
Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at the UN
UNITED NATIONS, October 7 -- In the Gambian election last month, thousands of non-Gambians from Senegal were brought in to vote by President Yahya Jammeh, it was admitted Friday by Kofi Annan's envoy to the election, former Nigerian General Abdulsalami Abubakar.
Jammeh recently said, "If I want to ban any newspaper, I will." Interviewed by Inner City Press on the 35th floor of the UN Headquarters on Friday, just after he briefed Kofi Annan, Gen. Abubakar was dismissive of reports of Jammeh's crackdown on the press, including his reported involvement in the killing of the editor of The Point newspaper. Jammeh's denial in that case was that "I don't believe in killing people, I believe in locking you up for the rest of your life."
Asked by Inner City Press about these and other Jammeh quotes, Gen. Abubaker was dismissive. "Jammeh can say he'll rule for the next thirty or forty years, but he could be voted out," Gen. Abubaker said.
Gen. Abubakar acknowledged the criticism by Gambian opposition groups and the Commonwealth observers of security personnel voting while in uniform, but stated that this is permitted by the Gambian Constitution.
Asked by Inner City Press about Yahya Jammeh's changes to the constitution, Gen. Abubakar said that people are entitled to their own opinions. Democracy, he said, is in the developing world a "sensitive matter" that must be "done with caution." He stated that the elections had gone "very well... I was there on election day and from what I saw it was peaceful."
Yahya Jammeh took power in 1994 in The Gambia, a country of 1.5 million people surrounded on three sides by Senegal. Industries include peanut farming and some tourism. In an interview with Inner City Press on September 21, 2006, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Frazer said that the Jammeh regime is reaching out for help to China, Iran and Venezuela. Friday Inner City Press asked UN Envoy Gen. Abubaker about this. Gen. Abubaker responded by quoting Jammeh, if you don't have to be my friend, you can't stop me from having other friends.
Asked by Inner City Press what his recommendations are, and what the UN will do, Gen. Abubaker first listed the need for better training of journalists. Perhaps a stop to the killing of journalists and editors would help. One wonders why Kofi Annan selected this Nigerian general, who ruled after Sani Abacha, as the UN envoy to the preordained re-election of Yahya Jammeh. One wonders what instructions Gen. Abubaker was given. After changing the constitution to allow himself to run for a third term, and after threatening districts that voted against him with losing development aid, he won garnered 67% of votes, to Oussainou Darboe's 27%, with voter turnout below 60%. This includes the votes of non-Gambians brought in from Senegal's still-troubled Casamance region, an influx that Gen. Abubaker put at "only" four thousand.
When asked if there was outside influence on the Gambian election, Gen. Abubaker said no, despite his statement about thousands of non-Gambians voting. "It wouldn't have changed the result," Gen. Abubaker said. Apparently, nothing would have.