At
UN,
As Ban's Sustainability Panel May Include Rudd, Can His Rule Be
Sustained?
By
Matthew
Russell Lee
UNITED
NATIONS,
August 9 -- After weeks without taking questions from the
independent press at the UN, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon will hold
a press conference Monday at 11. While questions of mis-management,
silence
on Darfur and powerless panels on Sri Lanka and the Gaza flotilla
swirl, a more upbeat pretext
for the presser has been found.
Ban will announce, or launch in UN
parlance, a “High Level Panel on Global Sustainability.” In announcing Ban's
long delayed press conference, the UN said it “will also address
other topics, including the Secretary General's recent trip to
Japan.”
Just before
he left on that trip, Ban took a single on
camera question, about his Gaza flotilla panel. For this question, he
chose the UN's own media, UN Radio. The self-interview was then
called a “media stakeout” by UN Television.
While
presumably
in an attempt to build suspense the UN's announcement said that the
“full list of Panel Members and their Terms of Reference will be
available at the press conference,” one possible member of the
Panel has been asked about by Inner City Press, repeatedly, resulting
in a series of “no comments” from the UN.
After
his loss of
power in Australia, Kevin Rudd flew to New York and met with Ban
Ki-moon. Inner City Press attended the photo op, and noted that Ban's
climate advisor Janos Pasztor was in attendance, and that the meeting
lasted a full 50 minutes.
(While Inner
City Press published its photos, it appears that none of UN Photo's
shots are on the UN website, when searched by "Rudd.")
Inner
City Press
asked Ban's spokesperson if the meeting involved the offering of a UN
position of any kind. It was just a courtesy call, Inner City Press
was repeatedly told -- even after Rudd, back in Australia, bragged
through his spokesman about the offer of a post.
UN
climate
staffers and Ban Ki-moon defenders approached Inner City Press to say
that what was being offered was not a full UN position, rather
membership on a new body -- the “High Level Panel on Global
Sustainability.”
This
would explain
the claim that the UN position Rudd was referring to would not
require relocating to New York, and would allow him to remain
involved in politics in Australia. His goal seemed to be to show his
successor his high international profile, to gain the foreign
minister spot. While this now seems unlikely, and Rudd's project of
seeking a Security Council seat may also be abandoned, this morning's
announcement may well involve Kevin Rudd.
Kevin Rudd stakeout re climate, 2009 -- UN post 2010 not shown
If
it does, it
will represent Ban causing a “major embarrassment” for the
current leader of Australia, Julia Gillard. Why would Ban do this?
Sources say that the Obama administration, which could veto a second
term for Ban, has urged Ban to find a position for Rudd.
Some
wondered why
Ban would name Alvaro Uribe to his Gaza flotilla panel just after
Venezuela delivered to Ban a letter accusing Uribe of trying to raise
tensions in the region. Now, Venezuela speaks of using its upcoming
post as head of the Group of 77 and China to try to stop a second
term by Ban. Watch this site.
Footnote:
Ban
is made a pattern of collecting outgoing heads of state. He named
Uribe to his Gaza flotilla panel even before Uribe left power in
Colombia, on August 7. Uribe will be deputy to former New Zealand
prime minister Geoffrey Palmer, a protoge of Helen Clark, whom Ban
named as the head of the UN Development Program (from which she has
increasingly commandeered other top UN posts, often to Ban's
detriment as in the case of naming Paul Kagame as Zapatero's co-chair
for MDGs advocacy, and a Costa Rican over African candidates for the
Number Two spot at UNDP.
Some
see the
contradiction: Ban refused to allow ostensibly independent OIOS chief
Inga Britt Ahlenius to choose her deputy, but allowed Helen Clark to
ignore a commitment made to the African Group to get the deputy post
at UNDP, when Clark was named to the top job, representing the
developed world. And so it goes in Ban's UN.
* * *
UN's
Ban
Slammed in Staff Union Resolution, for Lack of Action & Staff
Death, No
Confidence
Vote in Fall?
By
Matthew
Russell Lee, Exclusive
UNITED
NATIONS,
August 5 -- Open discontent
with the UN's Ban Ki-moon has
spread, reflected in a resolution
passed on August 5 by the UN Staff
Union deploring “the systemic lack of personal accountability and
transparency [which] has become more serious since the current
Secretary General took office.”
The
resolution
expresses deep concern about Ban's “apparent lack of interest in
seeking a determination of accountability for the numerous deadly
incidents involving staff members, including those who died in the
terrorist attack on the UN premises in Algiers in 2007 up to the
killing of [UN Security officer] Louis Maxwell in Afghanistan in
2009.”
As
Inner City
Press has exclusively reported, despite the finding in a still
withheld UN report that Louis Maxwell was murdered by Afghan National
Forces, Ban's top Security official Gregory Starr has said it is hard
to push the Afghans to investigate this one death, due to “cultural
sensitivity.”
The
resolution
notes the End of Assignment Report of the former head of the Office
of Internal Oversight Services Inga Britt Ahlenius, which among other
things criticized Ban's lack
of accomplishments in Myanmar and Sudan,
and Ban's losses in and lack of cooperation with the UN Dispute
Tribunal, where for example his Under Secretary General Shabaan
Shabaan has be ordered to pay a $25,000 fine for misconduct.
Unless
Ban takes
“immediate steps towards real reform,” the Staff Union will
consider a “vote of no confidence in the management of the UN and
its leadership” in the Fall, the season of the UN General Debate.
Click here
to see the penultimate draft of the resolution, which was
adopted in substantially the same form in a meeting Thursday
afternoon. Inner City Press exclusively obtained and is publishing
the resolution, here.
UN's Ban and ball, vote of no confidence not shown
This
comes as
countries in the General Assembly move to require Ban to appear
before them to seek a second term as Secretary General. In the past
weeks, Ban has deployed his Under Secretary General for Management
Angela Kane and his chief of staff Vijay Nambiar to defend his
performance.
In
light of the expanded and expanding critique, one
expects Ban to personally make his case. He is expected back in New
York, and to hold a press conference, on Monday, August 9. Watch
this site.
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