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At UN, Ban Is Called "Not Invisible" By
His Aides, Myanmar Silence Unexplained
Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of
Inner City Press at the UN: News Analysis
UNITED NATIONS,
September 29 -- Asked about 19 days
of silence about Myanmar by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, his
senior
advisor Nicholas Haysum on Monday said, "We're dealing with the
appearance
of silence... the perception of invisibility." Ban's advisor on
so-called
"global goods," Robert Orr, was similarly abstract, saying that
"this question of invisibility is a distraction."
Inner City
Press
had asked both men about criticism
of Ban that has come out in the past month,
and if their joint appearance for nearly an hour marked some sort of
new beginning
by the Ban administration. "No," said Mr. Orr, this has "nothing
to do with criticism." He said that no country, in its bilateral
meeting
with Ban, had raised the UN reform questions of availability
of audits to donor
states, or of whistleblower
protection.
If
anything, Haysom said, Ban may issue too many statement. But why then
did he
cancel his
scheduled September 27 press availability about Myanmar? Sometimes, Haysom said, involvement in
delicate negotiations limits the "capacity to stand outside the process
and shout." But 19 days after silence from Ban after his envoy Ibrahim
Gambari left Myanmar without meeting with either Nobel Peace
Prize-winning democracy
leader Aung San Suu Kyi or General Than Shwe?
Ban advisors Haysom and Orr, perception of
invisibility not shown
Another
Nobel Prize winner, Jody Williams, told Inner City Press later on
Monday that
Ban's involvement in Myanmar has been useless, that's why Aung San Suu
Kyi
rebuff his envoy, and that Ban is legitimizing a scam constitution
which
excludes the regimes main opponents, who won elections in 1990.
Haysom said
the decision to cancel the September 27 press availability about
Myanmar had
been Ban's, and that he couldn't explain it. Perhaps the track record
on this
issue, ascriticized by Nobel Peace Prize winner Jody Williams, explains
it.
News
analysis: Things can,
of course, always change. If Ban, who seems a genuinely affable person,
does
not want to speak to the press on the record about such issues as
Myanmar and
Darfur -- the latter he confined to off the record lunches which were
then
suspended -- then availability by his top advisors Haysom and Orr is
better
than nothing. If they they claim it has nothing to do with the mounting
criticism.
Footnote: Inner
City Press caught up with Ibrahim
Gambari later on Monday, and told him of the criticism by Jody Williams
and
fellow traveler Mia Farrow. Gambari said that he had been with Farrow
in
Angola, working together. Those then were the days. We hope to have
more from
and about Gambari later this week.
Watch this site, and this (UN) debate.
* * *
These
reports are
usually also available through Google
News and on Lexis-Nexis.
Click
here
for a Reuters
AlertNet piece by this correspondent
about Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army. Click
here
for an earlier Reuters AlertNet piece about the Somali
National
Reconciliation Congress, and the UN's $200,000 contribution from an
undefined trust fund. Video
Analysis here
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