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On Sri Lanka at
UN, Nambiar Said to Back Down to UK, Bloodbath Briefings
Byline:
Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at the UN: News Analysis
UNITED
NATIONS,
April 22, updated -- With
wildly divergent numbers circulating about the
numbers of civilians fleeing or dying in northern Sri Lanka, UN envoy
Vijay Nambiar is said to have reversed himself overnight and is now
expected to brief the Security Council this afternoon, well placed UN
sources tell Inner City Press. Even some of Nambiar's colleagues in
the heights of the UN expressed surprise to Inner City Press that
Nambiar “chose a fight we couldn't win.”
The
reference is to push back overnight by the United Kingdom, which
after protests in London sent its envoy Des Browne, rejected by Sri
Lanka, to the Council in New York. A senior UN official ascribed the
UK's belated interest to the protests. Early on, he said, when the UN
was speaking internally about helping with an “evacuation,” the
UK government wasn't interested, saying that the Liberation Tigers of
Tamil Eelam would use the movement of civilians to escape and fight
another day.
While
the UN's
various public schedules, including the daily Journal and the updated
wide screen televisions in the basement, still do not list any
Council briefing this afternoon, a notice went around on Tuesday
night that rather than Nambiar, John Holmes' humanitarian deputy
Catherine Bragg would do the briefing. Now, high UN officials say,
Nambiar is back on. We'll see.
UN's Nambiar in national dress, so light he can
reverse himself
Earlier
on
Tuesday there will be a press conference by a number of NGOs about
the situation in Sri Lanka. Inner City Press will attend and ask
questions, and may live-blog the press conference in this space, time
permitting.
Update of 10:50
a.m. -- The International Crisis Groups says the conflict will
go on
even if the LTTE is wiped out. HRW says numbers are hard to verify,
but military commanders haven't been told clearly enough they may be
held accountable for war crimes. Caritas says it is asking for $2.5
million. Will it be used in detention camps? James Traub, journalist
/ NGO official, is here but will not speak, at least not on the
panel.
Update
of 10:57
a.m. -- Operation USA says that the government prohibits NGOs from
mentioning or working on sexual violence, and has taken all doctors
in the conflict zone off their payroll, so they won't give out
numbers. A doctor was shot by a “militant” yesterday.
Footnote:
We continue to wait for the UK's formal answer to the first of the two
questions which Inner
City
Press asked the UK Mission to
the UN two questions on Sri Lanka early on April 15:
Does the UK
believe that international law and the
rights of UN humanitarian staff are being violated by the
now-acknowledged
detention of UN staff in the Sri Lankan government's “IDP” camps?
It has been reported
this morning that Sri Lanka's “minister also told the
British
Foreign Secretary that there was concern that the LTTE would
continue to
consolidate its fortification of the No-Fire Zone.” Please confirm the
accuracy
of that, and of this
and if so, does the UK interpret it as saying that
an offensive on the No-Fire Zone and the civilians in it will begin?
What did
the UK Foreign Secretary say?
As
of
this press time a week later, the formal answer has been
referral to Minister
Miliband's April 12
statement, and this.
Now Inner City Press has put the question to another Permanent Five
member's Permanent Representative. As more answers arrive or are
released we will report them on this site.
Click here
for a new YouTube video, mostly UN Headquarters footage, about civilian
deaths
in Sri Lanka.
Click here for Inner City
Press' March 27 UN debate
Click here for Inner City
Press March 12 UN (and AIG
bailout) debate
Click here for Inner City
Press' Feb 26 UN debate
Click
here
for Feb.
12 debate on Sri Lanka http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/17772?in=11:33&out=32:56
Click here for Inner City Press' Jan.
16, 2009 debate about Gaza
Click here for Inner City Press'
review-of-2008 UN Top Ten debate
Click here for Inner
City Press' December 24 debate on UN budget, Niger
Click here from Inner City Press'
December 12 debate on UN double standards
Click here for Inner
City Press' November 25 debate on Somalia, politics
and this October 17 debate, on
Security Council and Obama and the UN.
* * *
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
Feedback: Editorial
[at] innercitypress.com
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