As
DRC Cites
"Terrorist
Attack," Will
France Draft
UNSC Statement?
By
Matthew
Russell Lee
UNITED
NATIONS,
December 30 --
Amid the
gunfire in
Kinshasa, the
spokesperson
for Joseph
Kabila has
called it a
"terrorist
attack."
Following
minster of
information
Lambert
Mende's
statement, and
the events,
the question
arises: will
France, which
holds the UN
Security
Council "pen"
on the DRC and
controlled
the Council's
recent trip
there now
draft a
Council press
statement on
the chaos?
While
this remains
to be seen --
France
has been
silent in the
Council of
last on the
breakdown in
its former
colony the
Central
African
Republic, even
as eight
African
peacekeepers
have been
killed --
it
must be noted
that the UN
has proposed
removing a
full battalion
of
peacekeepers
from its
MONUSCO
mission in the
Democratic
Republic of
the Congo. Click
here for long
form analysis
on Beacon
Reader.
For
a week since
Secretary
General Ban
Ki-moon
announced that
he would
move
peacekeepers
and "assets"
including
attack
helicopters
from DRC,
Darfur, Abyei,
Liberia and
Cote d'Ivoire
to South
Sudan,
Inner City
Press has
asked Ban's
spokesperson
Martin Nesirky
about
any UN
analysis or
recognition of
the potential
impacts on the
places
the
peacekeepers
would be
removed from.
Nesirky
has
not answered
the questions.
None of them.
Another
question Inner
City Press
asked, about
tensions
between South
Korea and
Japan
including in
South Sudan
after Japanese
prime minister
Shinzo Abe's
visit to a
shrine for
Japan's World
War Two dead,
Nesirky
answered
but first
to other media
on a regional
or politicized
basis, 13
hours
before a more
general "Note
to
Correspondents."
These
practices are
being opposed
by the new Free UN Coalition for Access.
Mende's
use
of the word
"terrorist"
has
significance:
the Security
Council
routinely
issues fast
press
statements
condemning
terrorist
attacks. (See
yesterday's
Inner City
Press story here.)
So will France
propose a
press
statement now
on the DRC?
And will it
address, as
the UN
Secretariat
hasn't, the
pull out of a
battalion from
MONUSCO at
this time?
Watch this
site.
Footnote:
Meanwhile for
hours after
what Mende
called the
"terrorist
attack,"
nothing has
been heard
from the UN's
envoy to the
DRC Martin
Kobler. One
wag wondered
if Kobler was
"pulling a Hilde
Johnson" --
the UN's envoy
in South Sudan
said little in
the days after
the fighting
and killing in
Juba. Is
Kobler now as
aligned with
Kabila as Johnson
is with Salva
Kiir?
Kobler's
MONUSCO
mission was blithely tweeting
out
photographs of
blue helmets
holding hands
with Congolese
children... in
Pinga in
North Kivu,
far far away.
This is the
Department of
Peacekeeping
Operations
under Herve
Ladsous, who
"has a policy"
of not
answering
Press
questions, video here, UK
coverage here.
This is the UN
of late: no
answers, just
spin.
, 
