Inner City Press: Investigative Reporting from the United Nations

Hillary Emails Have 12 On Ban Ki-moon, 16 on Sri Lanka & Rape, Morocco

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, July 31 -- Among the 1,356 Hillary Clinton emails released by the US State Department on July 31 are 12 that mention UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

One was from Strobe Talbott, about dining with Ban (who will be in DC against next week, here) and trying to find the right "channel" to reach Hillary on, here.

One is a "Call Sheet" for Hillary Clinton to call Ban on August 24, 2009, starting "You are calling UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to ask him to co-host with you an event at UNGA to advance the Global Partnership for Agriculture and Food Security."

Another email, which Inner City Press reported a month ago, is about NOT having UN Food and Agriculture Organization chief Jacques Diouf host the meeting.

There is one email that mentions the UN Development Program, UNDP - but it is hard to read, literally: apparently a hard-copy.

There are 16 emails mentioning Sri Lanka. One of them also mentions Ban, whose record on Sri Lanka continues to be questioned today, but most of which are about responding to the Government of Sri Lanka complaining about Hillary Clinton linking their army to rape in a September 30, 2009 speech. It is "put to bed" by a letter to Sri Lanka's then Foreign Minister.

Morocco is mentioned only three times: the Forum for the Future twice, and once concerning urging Guinea's Dadis Camera to seek exile in Morocco or another French-speaking country.

Again, three of the emailed mentioning Ban Ki-moon are about the HEAL Africa facility in Goma, Eastern Congo (this overlaps with half of the six emails about Rwanda). In these, concern is expressed that a US program with Norway would undercut HEAL Africa. The complainant Lyn Lusi, it is said, is not “some random run-of-the-mill aid worker.” Never that!

On Darfur, when three Congressmembers criticized Obama's (lack of) policy, Rep Jim McGovern stayed out of it, liked food security (Hillary: when's that?)

Morocco gets confused with Guinea and the whole thing forwarded to Jeffrey Feltman, now with the UN.

As noted, there are 28 that mention Sri Lanka, where over 40,000 civilians were killed in 2009. The emails start on May 4 of that year, and mostly finish on May 21, when Hillary Clinton was to speak with then-President Mahinda Rajapaksa.

Finally in October 2009 there is talk about media and a letter to Sri Lanka's Permanent Representative to the UN, Palitha Kohona (who rented Manhattan real estate from head UN Correspondent, as exposed by Inner City Press and now the Free UN Coalition for Access).

Some are entirely redacted, like on May 16, 2009 from Gautam Rana. But there is this, on May 4, 2009, link here:

From: Bums Strider
To: H
Sent: Mon May 04 09:36:17 2009
Subject: Some intel for you...

This is about Sri Lankan Govt and the Tigers...
I have a good source.
This was shared to me at my and Karen's Derby Party yesterday (can you believe the 50 to 1 odds winner?).

There was a meeting held with Geitner asked for and led by IMF... They told him you were intruding into his domain by ordering/telling IMF to suspend funding to Sri Lakan Govt.

UNCLASSIFIED U.S. Department of State Case No. F-2014-20439 Doc No. C05761169 Date: 06/30/2015

My take is that the people on the ground both with World Bank and IMF believe the Tigers need to be completely defeated and any collateral damage inflicted on private people by SL govt in process is ok... They also believe Tigers are better at propaganda than SL govt...

I have no idea what reality is... I know all about the conflict because there's been so much written over time but no idea of reality on ground.

My point is that IMF/World Bank is hoping to get Geitner to intervene and they recently played to his sense of who is US point person on IMF... So, that's what I know. I'll keep my ears open.

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