By
Matthew
Russell Lee
UNITED
NATIONS,
August 22 -- A
French-proposed
draft press
statement on
fighting in
Eastern Congo
has not
immediately
been adopted
by the UN
Security
Council. Why?
The draft for
example asserted
without qualification
that any attack
on a member of
the UN's MONUSCO,
including its
new
Intervention
Brigade, would
be a war
crime.
But as Inner
City Press first
reported as
the only media
covering a
legal
roundtable with
outgoing UN
top counsel
Patricia
O'Brien, the
new Brigade
would be a
party to an
armed
conflict.
And another
legal expert
answered Inner
City Press, at a UN
session on
mercenaries,
that to shoot
at a party to
a conflict is
NOT a war
crime.
Still, the proponents
of the draft
press
statement were
angry; Reuters
quickly wrote
it up without
any analysis,
and blamed Rwanda.
Earlier on
Thursday,
Inner City
Press and
another
journalist
twice asked UN
Peacekeeping
acting chief
Edmond Mulet
Thursday if
the M23 rebels
had entered
the security
zone
established
around Goma.
"No,"
Mulet said.
"Just
mortars." He
went on to
refer to the
separate "red
line"
established
when M23
agreed in
Kampala
to pull out of
Goma. (The
portion of
that agreement
that gave M23
one
third of the
security force
at the Goma
airport
remains
unimplemented.)
But
later on
Thursday, the
wire service
Reuters reported
"a senior
U.N. official,
who asked not
to be named,
said that on
Thursday the
rebels entered
a security
zone
surrounding
Goma" -- which
Mulet,
the acting
chief of DPKO,
had just
denied. Inner
City Press and
the
other
journalist
waited to ask
Mulet again,
and got the
same answer.
So
who is this
"senior UN
official who
asked not to
be named"? In
UN
Peacekeeping,
only Herve
Ladsous,
long absent
from UN
Headquarters,
is senior to
and could
over-rule
Mulet.
Ladsous
has
in the past
spoon-fed
answers of
dubious
veracity to
this same
Reuters
UN bureau
bragging for
example about
the Congolese
Army
imposing
accountability
for the 135
rapes in
Minova in
November 2012.
But with only
a few
arrests for
the 135 rapes,
Ladsous' DPKO
continues
supporting the
391st
Battalion,
even as it is
now
implicated in
corpse
desecration.
That
the UN would
try to use
Reuters,
willingly,
resonates with
a
documented
instance in
June 2012 when
Reuters
UN bureau
chief Louis
Charbonneau
gave to UN
official
Stephane
Dujarric an
internal UNCA
anti-Press
document,
three
minutes after
saying he
would not do
so.
Story
here, audio here,
document
here, in
which
Charbonneau
tells
Dujarric, "You
didn't get
this from me."
So
is Reuters'
"senior UN
official who
asked not to
be named"
someone junior
to Mulet, or
as another
journalist
suggested, no
one
at all? Watch
this site.
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