At
UN, Ban Bashed for Sharing about Iran, Silent on Libya
Exclusion, DPRK
By
Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED
NATIONS, March 27 -- In a closed door meeting with the Organization
of the Islamic Conference on March 25, UN Secretary General Ban
Ki-moon was harshly criticized for having referred to Iran's nuclear
program in his presentation the day previous at the Security
Council's meeting on the "Middle East," Inner City Press
has learned.
Sources
who were in the meeting say that Ban was particularly taken to task
for saying he "shared" concerns about Iran, rather than
merely "taking note" of them. As explained later by an OIC
participant, Ban is free to tell the Israeli officials he meets with,
such as Ehud Barak, that he shares their concern. "But to do it
publicly?"
UN's Ban and Neyanyahu, OIC protest to shared
concern about Iran not shown
Also
in the OIC meeting, participants pointedly commiserated with Ban that
he had not received a proper welcome at the airport in Israel. The
next day Ban and his team flew off to Sirte, Libya, for the Summit of
the League of Arab States. Removed from the team at Libya's demand
was a UN Security officer, one of Ban's bodyguard who is from Lebanon
and a Shi'ite: Mohammed
Abdul-Hussein.
The basis of the visa denial was Libya's
dispute about the Vanished Imam. Inner
City Press wrote
this story Thursday night, and at Friday's UN noon
briefing Ban's spokesman Martin Nesirky said that "if" the
visa denial happened, Ban would certainly register a complaint. But
that would be after the exclusion was accepted, after the trip to
Sirte. Ban can't let principle get in the way of being present, one
UN insider said bitterly, of Ban trying desperately to be relevant.
In
this view, the UN is largely extraneous to the Middle East problem,
like other major global problems, from Iraq to Afghanistan to Iran
and North Korea. The UN tries for its own reasons to insert itself,
as the humanitarian arm of NATO or the U.S., using using its
"comparative advantage" such as it is on the Korean
peninsula.
But while rushing to find out what
happened to the sunken
South Korean ship, Ban's spokesman had not direct comment on North
Korea's -- "the DPRK," he quickly corrected -- threats to
use nuclear weapons on the U.S. and South Korea. Irrelevant?
, 
