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Unveiling a Center in Spain, UN's Ban
Predicted Voting and the Future, Approval Not Assured
Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at
the UN: News Analysis
UNITED NATIONS,
April 10 -- While
visiting Valencia back on November 17, the UN's Ban Ki-moon with the
Vice-President
of the Government of the Government of Spain "unveil[ed] a plaque at
the
site of the future United Nations Peacekeeping Logistics Base." That is
how
the UN's own web site describes it, in the caption to a photo of
the event.
There was and is only one problem: the UN's budgeting and
decision-making body,
the General Assembly, had not back in November approved any funding or
future
for such a logistics base in Valencia, and still has not approved it.
On April 7,
in a press release issued at 6 p.m., the UN confirmed Inner City Press'
earlier
story that Ines Alberdi of Spain was being named the
head of the women's agency UNIFEM. The next day for a follow-up,
Inner
City Press asked Ban's spokesperson Michele Montas about the connection
between
Spain's giving $700 million to the UN and Ms. Alberdi's appointment
over
India's Gita Sen, and the Valencia logistics base. From the transcript:
Inner
City Press: And then one
last thing that came up in the course of this.
It seems that Peacekeeping is going to open a
logistics base in
Valencia? There's a photograph showing
Mr. Ban meeting with the Vice-President of Spain. Does
that compete with the Brindisi Center?
Spokesperson: It completes the Brindisi Center.
It's a different set up. You
can have the information on that very
easily.
Actually,
there's very little publicly available about this Valencia center or
proposal,
for reasons that soon became clear.
Mr. Ban in Valencia: blueprints and
"unveiling" without any GA approval for the Center
Inner City Press on April 7 e-mailed the
Department of Peacekeeping Operations "as asked at today's noon
briefing,
what are the specifics of the planned peacekeeping logistics base in
Valencia,
Spain, when was it proposed and has it been approved by the General
Assembly?
If so, was it approved before November 2007?"
DKPO's
spokesman replied on April 9 that
"The
Valencia site will be
utilized to provide ICT services to UN peace operations. In conjunction
with
current operations in UNLB (Brindisi), the creation of this secondary
active
telecommunications facility will mitigate the single point of failure
risk that
exists in our current infrastructure and will ensure the safety of
peace
operations' information/data assets in the event of a catastrophic
incident. It
will also provide continuous voice, data and video services to field
missions
in case of short-term disruptions. The proposal to establish this
facility is
with the General Assembly and it is our expectation it will be taken up
in the
second resumed session."
This
"second resumed session" begins in May 2008. But why, then, did Ban
jump the gun and unveil a plaque in Valencia in November 2007, which
the UN
captioned as Ban and the Vice President "unveil a plaque at the site of
the future United Nations Peacekeeping Logistics Base." How can he be
so
sure? What will other member states think? Watch this site. (Here is a
screen-shot of the page, in case it after this is changed.)
* * *
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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