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Banning the Olympics, To Skip Beijing Games, UN's Ban Cites
"Scheduling Issues"
Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at
the UN: News Analysis
UNITED NATIONS,
April 10 -- Ban Ki-moon
is not "in a position to attend this important event," the opening
ceremony
of the Olympics in Beijing, "due to scheduling issues," his Deputy
Spokesperson Marie Okabe answered Inner City Press' question on
Thursday. Video
here,
from Minute 8:45. She declined to
answer follow-up questions on what these "scheduling issues" might
be, and on when Ban received a formal invitation to attend from the
Chinese
government.
On April 9, Inner City Press asked Ms. Okabe at the
UN's noon briefing,
"has the Secretary-General been invited to attend the Beijing Olympics
and, if so, what's his response?" Ms. Okabe said, "Yes, he has been
invited, but I have nothing to announce today on his travel plans. "
Click
here for transcript, here for video, from Minute 13:38, and here for
yesterday's Inner City Press story.
Inner City Press had been told that China, to
counter Ban's position
that he would not attend, had issued a formal invitation, with the idea
that
this would force Ban's hand. Later on Thursday, a South Korean source
in the UN
indicated that following the noon briefing question, the odds of Ban
attending
had gone up.
Whereas
a visit by Ban to Beijing in connection with the G-8 Summit in Japan on
July
7-9 was being floated as the reason not to return to the Far East for
the
Olympics opening ceremony on August 8, as of Thursday afternoon
consideration
was being given to scrapping the July side-trips to Beijing and Seoul,
and to
grant China's wish of Ban's presence at the sure-to-be-contentious
Olympic
Games.
Mr. Ban and Chinese Amb. Wang, Olympics
attendance not shown
Other
South Korean sources bemoaned that Olympics politics, in this scenario,
might
preclude Ban's long-awaited visit to Seoul as Secretary-General. Now,
with the
surprising announcement that Ban will not travel to China for the
Olympics, but
that according to Ms. Okabe other visits to China are planned, the G-8
Summit
trip to Japan may once again be combined with both China and South
Korea. We'll
see.
News analysis: Ms. Okabe was asked
that, since some countries are discussion boycotting the Olympics
opening
ceremony citing such issues as Tibet, Darfur, Myanmar and China's
forced return
of asylum seekers from North Korea, did Mr. Ban intend his
non-attendance as
any type of political message? While one assumes that Ban's ultimate
answer to
that question will be "no" -- and even that he may reverse himself
and end up attending on August 8 -- Mr. Okabe on Thursday replied that
the
above-quoted was all she had to say on the subject. Watch this space.
* * *
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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