Inner City Press
Global Inner Cities Report - March 27, 2006
At the UN, Dues Threats and
Presidents-Elect, Unanswered Greek Mission Questions
Byline:
Matthew Russell Lee, Inner City Press U.N. Correspondent
UNITED NATIONS, March 27 -- It was a surreal
scene Monday at the UN Security Council stakeout, as U.S. Congressmen Henry Hyde
(R-IL) and Tom Lantos (D-CA) took questions from reporters on their legislation
providing for the withholding of UN dues. Rep. Hyde spoke softly and evaded a
number of questions, including about documents from Paul Volcker's Oil-For-Food
inquiry reportedly seized by Rep. Hyde's office. "We only spoke of Mr. Volcker
in laudatory terms, not about his report," Rep. Hyde said. Behind him stood a
half dozen other members of Congress, including Rep. Smith (R-NJ) who strode off
past the Trusteeship Council and ECOSOC Chambers without taking questions about
a matter he's held hearing on, Sudan. In London reports have surfaced of
Sudanese Maj.-Gen. Salah Abdullah Gosh meeting earlier this month with British
and U.S. officials, despite being accused of responsibility for deaths in Darfur.
US Congressmen at UN,
3/27/06
At the same time, incumbent Haitian president
Préval briefed reporters in Room S-226, speaking of the need for private
investment and for the continuation of the UN mission there. Presumably he will
be raising the first matter with the IMF and World Bank in his meetings later
this week. On the mystery of the 17 skulls found over the weekend in an affluent
Port au Prince suburb, no question was allowed. The President-elect's entourage
swept out of the room by the side door (as had Mr. Qazi, after declaring that
events in Iraq fall short of civil war, a position seemingly later contradicted
by his position in Khartoum). Also at the noon briefing, it was announced that
General Assembly President Eliasson will also from April 24th onward serve as
Sweden's foreign minister; following this announcement, no questions were asked.
Nearly lost in all this was the Greek Foreign
Minister's canceling of her scheduled press briefing at 11:30. Inner City Press
asked about this at the regular noon briefing and was told to contact the Greek
mission. As of press time, the Greek mission had not responded to questions put
to it in writing, including a request for an update on the case of Professor
Takis Alexiou, and this:
"in the Foreign
Minister's meetings in Washington before coming up to New York, was the matter
of Greek troop participation in Afghanistan raised? What is Greece's position on
this matter?"
After five p.m. came this response: "The
Minister has left NY returning to Athens"...
Footnote: In a sparsely attended Human Rights
Committee meeting in Conference Room 2, a proposal was made to release documents
to the public without the footnotes (without noting this omission). This was
followed-up with a suggestion that this open meeting, at which the suggestion
was made, should be re-classified as a closed meeting. Then in the afternoon,
for a meeting to for "consideration of communications under the Optional
Protocol to the [ICCPR] that had been listed as open (including on the video
screens just outside Conference Room 2), a paper sign went up on the entrance
doors: "Closed meeting, members only." And so it goes...
* *
*
Kofi, Kony,
Kagame and Coltan: This Moment in the Congo and Kampala
Byline:
Matthew Russell Lee, Inner City Press U.N. Correspondent
UNITED
NATIONS, March 20 -- As Kofi Annan visits Congo-Brazzaville and then
Congo-Kinshasa,
it is reported that Joseph Kony and others in the Lord's Resistance Army
have taken refugee in Garamba National Park in the eastern Democratic
Republic of the Congo. Speaking in Nairobi, Ugandan president Yoweri
Museveni has threatened to send soldiers across the border after Kony
"to the Garamba National Park of Congo-Kinshasa [which] is under the
control of the United Nations and the Kinshasa government." DRC
spokesman Henri Mova Sakanyi told AFP that Museveni is threatening to
continuing looting Eastern Congo. "Museveni can still recollect how
Uganda looted from our country's northern region for five years and what
he did through militia who remained on the ground," Mova said. The
looting of the Congo has included everything from timber to the coltan
used in cell phones. Indicative on the continuing chaos, Mova added that
the DRC authorities have "no means of establishing whether the LRA were
present in the country."
The United Nations has 17,000 peacekeepers in the DRC, and Joseph Kony
has been indicted by the UN's International Criminal Court. On Monday,
Inner City Press asked Kofi Annan's spokesman at the noon briefing if
the UN / MONUC could confirm Joseph Kony's presence in the DRC, and if
so what action would be taken. The response, given after the briefing,
was that "We're not in a position to confirm
Kony's whereabouts" and "we continue to encourage the resolution of this
matter through political rather than
military means. Also, the international community
would find it very difficult to condone any
violation of the DRC's territorial
integrity by any of its neighboring states." Other incursions into the
DR Congo have been directed by the Rwandan government of Paul Kagame.
The Kampala newspaper New Vision
reported on a meeting in Washington last week between Ugandan
journalists and the U.S. Director for African Affairs at the National
Security Council, Cindy Courville, quoting Ms. Courville that "We know
that you are challenged by Kony. Many people feel frustrated but we have
to work with you and get a solution. We feel that it is probably not
right to deploy 2,000 American soldiers to fight one man." (How this
relates to Osama Bin Laden, or Saddam Hussein for that matter, is not
clear, noted one wag.)
A question here is how
much involves pretexts to access DR Congo's resources, versus a
commitment to human rights and end to impunity. Another question
involves how credible, even with the EU force agreed to earlier today,
the results of the elections slated for June can be. A third question
involves
reports of
avian flu in both DR Congo and Uganda. And a fourth question, ongoing,
concerns MONUC's "Operation Ituri Engraver," regarding which Inner City
Press was informed on March 20 by an OSSG staffer: "heard back from the
Mission on Operation Engraver... not much to report there except that
units are still in position and a few skirmishes but that's pretty much
it -- no change in deployment or serious encounters." We will continue
pursuing these questions - watch this site.
MONUC / UN helicopter
Brazzaville
3/19/06
Elsewhere at UN
headquarters on Monday, during a discussion of human rights in the Hong
Kong SAR it was noted (and by wi-fi confirmed) that the
official web site's index
link on human rights -- leads
nowhere...
An update: on Monday UNHCR disclosed
that it has been asked to leave Uzbekistan in one month's time, noting
that "[t]he fate of an increasing number of Uzbek asylum seekers
who have been detained in Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS)
countries and forcibly returned to Uzbekistan is also of continuing
concern to UNHCR." Inner City Press, which reported last month on the
eleven Uzbeks deported from Ukraine, has asked UNHCR how many more Uzbek
asylum seekers have been detained in CIS countries and, separately, have
been forcibly returned to Uzbekistan. This would seem to be a question
that can be answered in the next month.
In
Congolese Chaos, Shots Fired at U.N. Helicopter Gunship
Byline:
Matthew Russell Lee, Inner City Press U.N. Correspondent
UNITED NATIONS, March
2 – In the eastern Congo, a joint operation between UN peacekeepers and
Congolese soldiers to drive militias out of the town of Tchei has been called
off, following a mutiny by dozens of Congolese soldiers. The soldiers fired on a
UN helicopter carrying General Padiri of the Forces Armées de la République
Démocratique du Congo, or FARDC. What this means for the DRC elections
scheduled for later this year, and for the 17,000 UN peacekeepers in the DRC, is
not clear.
At a noon
briefing at UN headquarters in New York, the Secretary-General’s spokesman
described the operation to re-take Tchei. In response to a question by Inner
City Press, he also described Congolese army officers taking refuge from their
troops in a UN compound. The questions of implications for UN peacekeeping and
DR Congo’s slated elections were left open. Following the briefing, a staffer
tracking developments in Ituri confirmed that shots had been fired at UN
helicopter. He reported that a UN camp had been looted of foodstuff, saying
that might explain the mutiny. He added that despite some reports that rebels
were using human shields, there is no evidence of that.
The
mutiny by the FARDC troops in Tchei is not a one-off or primarily food-driven
event. Further south, there have been reports of desertions from the FARDC’s
109th brigade, by soldiers refusing to fight the Burundian National Liberation
Front Hutu rebels. In Ituri, the major groups are not Hutu and Tutsi but rather
Hema and Lendu, and the largest rebel group is the Congolese Revolutionary
Movement, which claims 18,000 militiamen.
In terms
of natural resources, the DR Congo has many, including but not limited to the
coltan which is used in cellular phones; its resources have been up for grabs
during the last years of chaos. Now some politicians in the Congolese Rally for
Democracy (CRD) party are demanding immediate implementation of provisions
concerning the share of the tax revenues between the central government and the
provinces. Joseph Kabila’s People's Party for Reconstruction and Development (PPRD)
has refused. Meanwhile, there’s been a recent leak of a report by the DRC's
National Assembly's Special Commission on the war contracts reporting up to $10
billion may have been embezzled by the regime of Kabila père and the
other warring parties.
While
public announcements of financial arrangements are few, in a rare and surreal
November 2005 press release, First Canadian American Holding Corporation (FCAHC)
announced that its CEO Sandy Winick had “met with the Chargé d'Affaires --
Madam Louise Nzanga Ramazani of the DRC at their Embassy in Ottawa with First
Canadian's consulting firm Quathemetin Consultants, to discuss furthering the
development of low-cost housing in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. First
Canadian American Holding Corporation is the international licensee for
Terrablock building products, a construction and development firm based in
Orlando, Florida.” FCAHC describes itself has having “operations in areas of
digital television, radio and building and construction” and as “actively
looking at several other opportunities in many different industries such as
natural resources, wireless, technology and biotechnology.”
In terms
of housing, or the re-housing of those displaced, amid reports that hundred of
civilians have fled Tchei, Inner City Press inquired with
UNHCR in Geneva regarding provisions for refugees but was still awaiting a
response at press time. From Kinshasa, MONUC issued a press release stating that
civilians in Tchei are or were being “held against their will,” but
distinguishing this from human shields since “due to their rules of engagement,
blue helmets have to identify their targets before opening fire with light or
heavy weapons, such as attack helicopters.” Meanwhile the rebels in Tchei have
fired at UN helicopters. The Congo war and its four million dead, already
barely covered in major media, can barely hit the news even when a UN helicopter
is fired upon. This is a developing story that we will continue to follow.
Multimedia: Audio
report from VoA
Inner City Press
Global Inner Cities Report - February 28, 2006
In the Sudanese Crisis, Oil
Revenue Goes Missing, UN Says
Byline: Matthew Russell Lee, Inner
City Press U.N. Correspondent
UNITED NATIONS, Feb. 28 – The UN’s Jan Pronk, briefing reporters on
Tuesday about developments in Sudan, said that his mission is
underfunded and that as regards Sudan’s oil sales, there is no
transparency and little benefit to the Sudanese people. In the North
–South conflict, according to Mr. Pronk, the North claims to have
forwarded $700 million in oil revenues to the South, as a sort of peace
dividend. But the South says the money has not been received. Mr. Pronk
said, “Where is the oil? How much is there? How much is being produced?
What is the reference price?” Mr. Pronk said he is awaiting information
from the International Monetary Fund. “There is no transparency,” he
said.
When
asked by Inner City Press if he could, within the bounds of diplomacy,
provide guidance to countries which are economically engaged with Sudan,
Mr. Pronk declined, limiting his response to the Security Council’s
consideration of a list of responsible individuals (but not
corporations). Unstated at the briefing was the well documented
engagement in Sudanese oil by Security Council member China.
Darfur
Mr. Pronk
also spoke of Chad, into which the conflict has spread, and where the
government recently reneged on its previous commitments that the revenue
from the Chad-Cameroon oil pipeline, run by ExxonMobil, would be devoted
to social welfare programs. Mr. Pronk stated that Chad is blocking
action on cease-fire and other issues in the Abuja process.
Mr. Pronk
referred several times to Al Qaeda. On the one hand he stated that a
force from the UN, rather than NATO, would be less likely to “set off a
jihad.” On the other hand he referred to death threats in letters – not
against him, he said, but unnamed others. This is based on intelligence,
he said.
Interviewed after the briefing by Inner City Press, Mr. Pronk elaborated
on his earlier comment that NATO has “boots on the ground” in Darfur.
Asked about press reports that NATO has been providing air support to
the African Union force in Darfur, Mr. Pronk shook his head. “They have
a few helicopters,” he said. “But nothing more than that.”
Logistically, while Mr. Pronk had planned to meet with the African
Union at a meeting about Darfur on March 3, that meeting has been
postponed for a week. Mr. Pronk will be in Paris on that day at what he
called “his” Consortium meeting, but said that “we” will be represented
at the Feb. 10 AU meeting. We’ll see…
Another Inner
City Press report earlier this year on Sudan:
Darfur on the Margins:
Slovenia’s President Drnovsek’s Quixotic Call for Action Ignored
Byline:
Matthew Russell Lee, for Inner City Press
UNITED NATIONS, Jan. 18 – If the
president of a lesser-known former Yugoslav republic calls for
coordinated global action in Sudan, does anybody hear?
At the United Nations on Jan. 18,
Slovenia’s president Janez Drnovsek briefed reporters about the
initiative he began two weeks ago by writing letters to the presidents
of other, mostly larger countries, highlighting the crisis in Darfur. So
far few countries have responded. Just prior to the press conference,
the U.S. representative to the UN, John Bolton, told Slovene media he
hadn’t heard of Mr. Drnovsek’s plan. When asked by Inner City Press if
he still intends to go to Washington to meet with members of Congress,
Mr. Drnovsek said no, since “some Senators have not come back from their
holidays yet.” Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito might disagree.
Mr. Drnovsek compared Darfur with Rwanda
and, closer to Slovenia, to Bosnia. He stated that in the past three
years in Darfur, three million people have been displaced, and 100,000
killed. He proposed, in the short term, opening a refugee camp for up to
10,000. He mentioned China’s business involvements in Sudan, without
mentioning the word oil. Without mentioning Iraq, Mr. Drnovsek noted
that the U.S. might not be in a position to send soldiers, but should
otherwise contribute. “Mr. Bolton,” he said, “has surely heard of Darfur.”
But apparent not of the Slovene president’s plan, nor perhaps of the
Slovene president himself.
Several reporters noted the
relative importance of what is said, and who does the saying. John
Bolton can ignore a Slovene proposal. Similarly, for readers of
Inner City Press’ recent UN
reporting, the
International Monetary Fund and the
IAMB can apparently
ignore questions from the smaller, more independent media about the oil
metering contract in Iraq with a still unnamed U.S. company that was
mentioned at their December 28 press conference. The U.S. company has
still not been named, despite a public commitment to do so by early
January. Inner City Press will continue to follow this and other
UN-related issues.
Janez Drnovsek is not the first Slovene
president to trod the UN stage in Turtle Bay. Janez Stanovnik, president
just after the collapse of Yugoslavia, served for years at the United
Nations’ Economic Commission for Europe, and at UNCTAD. Mr. Stanovnik
told the UN Intellectual History Project that “it is completely
illogical that the operational decisions be carried out under the
principle of one country, one vote,” given the difference in population
between countries. Perhaps that is why some can ignore current Slovene
president Drnovsek. But as he pointed out, what role is the world’s most
populous nation playing in Sudan? The power-players at the UN are all
otherwise occupied, with Iraq and now Iran (and, much further down the
list, bird flu). Egypt still has imprisoned several hundred Sudanese
refugees, including from Darfur. In these swirling news cycles in which
Africa is so often an after-thought, Mr. Drnovsek’s lonely voice is
welcome. But will it be enough?
Some previous reports:
In Locked Down
Iraq, Oil Flows Unmetered While Questions Run in Circles
What is the Sound
of Eleven Uzbeks Disappearing? A Lack of Seats in Tashkent, a Turf War
at UN
Kosovo: Of
Collective Punishment and Electricity; Lights Out on Privatization of
Ferronikeli Mines
Abkhazia:
Cleansing and (Money) Laundering, Says Georgia, Even Terror’s Haven
Post-Tsunami
Human Rights Abuses, including by UNDP in the Maldives
Halliburton
Repays $9 Million, While Iraq’s Oil Remains Unmetered
Darfur on the
Margins: Slovenia’s President Drnovsek’s Quixotic Call for Action
Ignored
Who Pays for the
Global Bird Flu Fight? Not the Corporations, So Far - UN
Royal Bank of
Scotland Has Repeatedly Been Linked to Terrorist Finance and Money
Laundering, Not Only in the Current Brooklyn Case
From Appalachia
to Wall Street: Behind the Mining Tragedy, UBS and Lehman Brothers
Iraqis Absent
from Oil Oversight Meeting on Development Fund for Iraq, Purportedly Due
to Visa Problems
Watching the
Detectives: Oversight of the Development Fund for Iraq Will be Discussed
at the UN on December 28, 2005
From the UN
Budget, Transit Strike, to the USA Patriot Act, 2005 Ends with
Extensions
Some previous
highlights and special reports:
Citigroup
Dissembles at United Nations Environmental Conference
The United
Nations' Year of Microcredit: Questions & No Answers
Older Inner City Press
reports are archived on
www.InnerCityPress.org - if you have
trouble finding previous articles, please
contact us
©opyright 2006 Inner City Press, Inc. To request
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