Inner City Press -- Investigative Reporting From the Inner City to Wall Street to the United Nations

At UN, Fast Moves for Ban Includes Monday Security Council Consultations, Sources Say, Not Yet Russia

By Matthew Russell Lee, Exclusive

UNITED NATIONS, June 6, updated -- After Ban Ki-moon on Monday morning told the press it would be natural for the Security Council to take up his request for a second term this week, a Council source told Inner City Press that the Council had immediately scheduled consultations for Monday afternoon, after a meeting about the Council's trip to Africa.

  It's strange, the source said, we had expected the Gabonese to meet bilaterally and sound countries out. But they're going for it now, making everyone show their cards.

  Significantly, perhaps, so far nothing has been said by veto-wielding Russia.

  After Ban met with the Asia Group on Monday morning, Chinese Ambassador Li Baodong summoned reporters to the stakeout to express China's support for Ban. He took questions off camera, and Inner City Press asked what China thinks of Ban's performance on Libya under Resolution 1973.

  Li Baodong said China is concerned with the way it has been implemented, that the language of the resolution should not be gone beyond. Ban, he said, is “every month available for a briefing.” But is that all a UN Secretary General can do?

  US Deputy Permanent Representative Rosemarie DiCarlo told the press midday on Monday that the US would have a statement about Ban. Inner City Press asked Permanent Representative Susan Rice as she went into the Security Council at 3 pm if the US had a statement about Ban.

  “We'll say something,” Ambassador Rice responded with a smile, “when we're saying something.”

 As it turned out, her spokesman Mark Kornblau had already “said in a statement” that "We welcome the announcement. We have worked constructively with the secretary-general over the past several years on a wide array of complex challenges facing the United Nations and the international community."

  So perhaps Ambassador Rice's quip wasn't about the US position -- ostensibly already sent out to some by Kornblau -- but about the Council as a whole. [It's been clarified that Kornblau was responding by e-mail to a reporter's question.]

  As the Monday afternoon Council session started, Russian sources predicted to Inner City Press that the Russian Mission to the UN will not yet speak on Ban's self-nomination, under the theory of “what's the rush” and also with the perception of two centers of power back in Moscow.

Ban & Lavrov in Moscow, old DESA deal not shown, consultations to come

They talk, historically if nothing else, of a deal for Kofi Annan's second term under which Annan was to have named a Russian official to be the head of the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, which never happened. What deals have been struck, and with which countries, this time?

While Ban did not answer Inner City Press' question Monday morning about his 2007 statement that top officials should only serve five years, there is talk of chief UN peacekeeper Alain Le Roy being replaced, by another Frenchman. France's foreign minister Alain Juppe has already come out for Ban Ki-moon. Again, what other deals have been struck, and with which countries?

And would calling Monday afternoon consultations force the hand of Russia and others?

Update of 4:02 pm -- after the report above, the Council is in consultations on Ban Ki-moon; one Deputy Permanent Representative wouldn't even predict how long it will last, saying "it depends on how many people want to talk."

Update of 4:25 pm -- the consultations broke up, with one Council member predicting it will be "done this month." Another Council member was more specific, saying "next week." But with this gang you can't be sure: they might "try to ram Ban through at any time," as one wag put it.

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