On
Reports Guterres &
Kotzias Tension at Cyprus Talks,
Greece Tells ICP Unfounded
By
Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED
NATIONS, January 16 -- Amid
reports on Greek Foreign
Minister Nikos Kotzias at the
Cyprus talks in Geneva with
Antonio Guterres, Inner City
Press on January 16 asked the
UN's deputy spokesman Farhan Haq
about it. Video
here, UN
transcript here:
Inner
City Press: I'm sure
you've seen the coverage of the…
the Cyprus talks. A number
of the stories said that the…
the Greek Foreign Minister and
the Secretary-General didn't get
along and that, here's a quote
from one of the stories.
"Guterres was so irritated that
he… he has refused to sit in the
same room as the Greek Foreign
Minister in the foreseeable
future."
There are at least three
different articles in three
separate media saying
this. So I'm just
wondering, how would you
characterise the… the… the
participation of the Greek
Foreign Minister and the
Secretary-General's view going
forward on his participation?
Deputy Spokesman: No, I
mean, that, that's not, that's
not accurate. What, what I
would say is the
Secretary-General has been
dealing and will continue to
deal with all the various sides
regarding this.
You will have seen what the
Secretary-General said last
week, and I would just refer you
back to the text of what he
said. We continue to hope
that there will be an
agreement. Obviously, we
want to make sure that this is a
lasting and sustainable
agreement, and we will work in
good faith with all the various
sides.
After Haq said that reports of
Guterres being irritated were
inaccurate, the Head of Press
and Communication Office of
Greece's Mission to the UN
Athanasia Papatriantafyllou told
Inner City Press that the reports
were unfounded and relations
with Guterres excellent.
The Greek version is that while
Kotzias wanted a political
meeting about Cyprus on
Friday in Geneva, the
Turkish side said they had other
engagements, presumably the
Astana talks on Syria. Perhaps
Turkey is feeling ascendant.
We'll have more on this.
It's
still worth revisiting the more
staged meeting of the two back
on January 6 (Inner
City Press photos here, Periscope here.)
Guterres joked that Kotzias'
gifts, a book, music CDs and a
box, were too heavy.
(Earlier in the day Guterres has
been led around to take selfies
with the correspondents the UN
has not, like Inner City Press,
evicted from their offices for
covering UN corruption, like the
Ng Lap Seng / John Ashe bribery
case. Video
here, story
here.)
The Greek meeting followed one
on January 5 with Turkey's
Foreign Minister Mevlüt
Çavusoglu. Photo
here; video
here.
Present at both meetings was
UN's Cyprus envoy Espen Barth
Eide, and Ban's Under
Secretaries General Feltman,
Ladsous and O'Brien. The "P3
men," some call them. Will they
be switched not only for gender,
but nation?
Guterres'
new chief of staff Maria Luiza
Ribeiro Viotti was there; his
Deputy SG Amina J. Mohammed
won't formally begin until next
month. Will that trigger the end
of Ban Ki-moon's era of
censoring and restricting the
Press?
Has
Guterres been
informed and digested that
one of the most active media at
the UN, Inner City Press which
at the January 5 noon briefing
asked about Myanmar, the Central
African Republic and Gambia, was
thrown
out of its office in 2016
and is still
being restricted and confined
to minders in 2017 for
merely trying to cover a
meeting, relevant to the Ng Lap
Seng UN bribery case, in the UN
Press Briefing Room?
On
January 3 when Guterres formally
took the reigns at the United
Nations on Tuesday, he said of
the UN, “We have to earn the
right to do the right thing.” Vine here.
He
might have added, “re-earn” the
right, because in recent years
the UN has been bleeding
credibility, from shirking for
six years its responsibility for
bringing cholera to Haiti to
letting peacekeepers who have
raped in the Central African
Republic and elsewhere enjoy
immunity, and even as in the
base of the Burundian contingent
in CAR, to rotated 800 more
troops in to get paid.
And so any implementation of
Guterres' message of hope would
have to include replacing the
Ban Ki-moon era officials who
brought the UN into disrepute. 45-second
tweeted video here.
UN Peacekeeping's Herve Ladsous,
who said that his troops would
rape less frequently if they had
been R&R or “rest and
recreation,” is slated to leave
in March. Longer
YouTube here.
But a real litmus test will be
replacing the head of Ban's
Department of Public Information
Cristina Gallach, who bought the
UN down first by neglecting to
do any due diligence as
now-indicted Macau businessman
Ng Lap Seng bought events in the
UN including its slavery
memorial (audit
here, Paragraphs 37-40 and
20b) then by ousting,
evicting and still
restricting the
investigative Press
which asked her about it.
There's
also the Wonder
Woman as UN ambassador fiasco,
and spending taxpayers' funds on
a DPI trainer who, among other
things, called
Detroit, Michigan a “third
rate city” in “flyover
country.” Four strikes and
you're out. Busca una otra.
***
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