With
UN Ignored in
Cairo Q&A,
Who Spoon-Fed
to Reuters
Trip
Confirmation?
By
Matthew
Russell Lee
UNITED
NATIONS,
August 17 --
With the UN
and its envoy
Jeffrey
Feltman
apparently
irrelevant in
the Egyptian
presidency's
August 17
press
conference
in Cairo,
questions
mount about
why the UN on
August 15
called the Press
report of
Feltman's trip
just a rumor -
then handed
confirmation
to Reuters,
with no
transparency
and apparently
quid
pro
quo.
Just
after the
Egypt session
of the UN
Security
Council on
August 15,
Inner City
Press exclusively
reported,
with
audio,
that Feltman
would
visit Cairo.
But
later on
August 15,
Secretary
General Ban
Ki-moon's
associate
spokesperson
Farhan Haq
called the
Inner City
Press "just a
rumor."
Then
on August 16
just before
Ban's Deputy
Spokesman
Eduardo Del
Buey at
the noon
briefing
answered Inner
City Press'
question with
an
"If-Asked"
confirming
Feltman's
trip, Reuters
ran a two
paragraph
"story"
quoting "the
United
Nations"
confirming
Feltman's trip.
Inner
City Press asked
Del Buey: how
was this
information
released? From
the UN's
transcript:
Inner
City
Press:
yesterday, at,
at the end of
the Security
Council
meeting, the
Egyptian
Permanent
Representative,
I asked him
and he
said that Mr.
[Jeffrey]
Feltman has
asked to go,
that
arrangements
have been
made, that
high-level
meetings have
been set up,
then I,
for some how,
the UN, at
least, as of
yesterday,
wasn’t willing
to
confirm that.
Can you now
say, is Mr.
Feltman going?
Are the
meetings set
up? Who is he
going to meet
with? That’s
the
question.
Deputy
Spokesperson
Del Buey:
Well, Matthew,
Under-Secretary
General
Feltman has
been asked by
the
Secretary-General
to conduct
some
regional
consultations
in several
countries
after the
conclusion of
the
Secretary-General's
current trip
to the Middle
East. While
some
of the stops
are still
pending, Mr.
Feltman does
hope to meet
Egyptian
interlocutors
in Cairo next
week.
Inner
City
Press: And can
you, can I
just, this is
a procedural
question;
when, this,
this
confirmation
that you are
now reading
here, when did
you come up
with it? When
did, when was
it--
Deputy
Spokesperson
Del Buey:
Well, whenever
I came up with
it--
Inner
City
Press: Right…
was it given
to some, was
it given to
some
before others?
Deputy
Spokesperson
Del Buey: We
are announcing
it here now.
But
it was
given, by "the
United
Nations," to
Reuters before
the noon
briefing. How?
By whom? This
like numerous
recent
questions to
Ban's Spokesperson's
Office, has
still not been
answered;
allusion
off-camera has
been made to a
"leak."
A
leak from
Ban's
Spokesperson's
Office?
Because the
Reuters report
quotes "the
United
Nations." Del
Buey says he
didn't
release the
information
before reading
the If-Asked
at the noon
briefing. So:
did Haq? Or
another in
Ban's
spokesperson's
office,
closely
associated
with Reuters?
It
must be noted
that Reuters'
UN bureau
chief Louis
Charbonneau
has
been shown,
with documents,
to have spied
for the UN,
providing
internal
anti-Press
documents of
the UN
Correspondents
Association to
UN Department
of Public
Information
official
Stephane
Dujarric,
three
minutes after
promising
not to.
Story
here, audio here,
document
here
(note
Charbonneau's
"you
didn't get
this from me.")
These type of
practices are
opposed,
strenuously
and formally,
by the new
Free UN
Coalition for
Access, @FUNCA_info (see
UN reaction
and threats,
here.)
It's
also
noteworthy
that Reuters
would publish
a mere pass
through of
this "United
Nations" gift,
with no
background
such as
Feltman's
previous
position with
the US State
Department, or
the
context, also
first reported
by Inner
City Press,
that Feltman
was
already
planning this
Egypt trip
before the
August 14
killings.
We'll
have more on
this. Watch
this site.