Nagorno-Karabakh President Disputes Fires and
Numbers, Oil and UN, in Exclusive Interview with Inner City Press - Video
here
Byline: Matthew Russell Lee, Correspondent at the UN
UNITED NATIONS, November 13 -- Of the so-called
frozen conflicts in the world, the one in the Nagorno-Karabakh region in
Azerbaijan, claimed by Armenia, heated up this Fall -- literally.
In August and September 2006, Azerbaijan
and Armenia traded volleys of draft resolutions in the UN General Assembly,
about a series of fires in the Nagorno-Karabakh region which on most maps is
Azerbaijan, but is not under Azeri control.
The subtext of the fight was
that Azerbaijan wants the dispute to be addressed in the
UN General Assembly,
while Armenia prefers the ten-year process before the Organization for Security
and Cooperation in Europe, the OSCE. In the UN General Assembly these frozen
conflicts are often treated as footnotes, particularly to a
press
corps which covers the Security Council in the most minute detail, at the
expense of most other activities undertaken by the world body.
Last week Inner City Press sat down for
an interview with the president of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, Arkady
Ghoukasyan, and asked him about the fires, about the UN and other matters. Click
here
for the video.
"The fires were provoked by Azerbaijan
firing," Mr. Ghoukasyan said. "They used special bullets that would ignite wheat
fields."
In the UN, "the countries of the Islamic
Conference are present and Azerbaijan is hoping to use their support," said Mr.
Ghoukasyan. He added that most countries in the UN know little of the Karabakh
conflict, so "Azerbaijan can try propaganda in the United Nations," in a way
that it can't with the OSCE "experts."
By contrast, the situation in
Abkhazia is routinely put on the UN Security Council agenda by Russia, with
representative of Georgia often excluded from the meetings and resorting to
sparsely-attended press conferences outside, most recently on
October 12.
On Nagorno-Karabakh, UN observers see
Turkey backing Azerbaijan, while the NKR is represented, if one can call it
that, by Armenia. The interview, originally scheduled for a hotel across from UN
Headquarters, was moved six blocks south to the Armenian mission in a brownstone
on 36th Street, to a second-story room with the Nagorno-Karabakh flag on the
table. Through a translator, Mr. Ghoukasyan argued that no negotiations that do
not involve representatives of Nagorno-Karabakh can solve the problem. "The
prospects are diminishing, without Nagorno-Karabakh involvement, it's just
impossible to come to a resolution," he said.
Hot Words From Frozen Conflicts
Inner City Press asked Mr. Ghoukasyan to
compare Nagorno-Karabakh to certain other so-called frozen conflicts, two of
which are before the OSCE: Transnistria a/k/a Transdnestr, and South Ossetia,
where a referendum was held on November 12, the results of which no country in
the world recognized.
"We already had our referendum,"
Mr. Ghoukasyan said, "back in 1991. We would only hold another one if Azerbaijan
and the co-chairs of the OSCE group agreed in advance to recognize its results."
Mr. Ghoukasyan said he had come to the
U.S. less to build political support or to propose a referendum than to raise
funds for infrastructure projects in Nagorno-Karabakh, mostly from "different
circles of Armenians in the United States." He is on a whirlwind tour: "Detroit
Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and maybe Fresno, we are still finalizing
our West Coast program," he said. A highlight will be a telethon from Los
Angeles on November 23.
Speaking of funds, and of infrastructure,
Inner City Press asked about the impact of the Baku - Tbilisi - Ceyhan (BTC) oil
pipeline on the conflict.
"Azerbaijan is trying to get maximum
political dividends from fact of this pipeline," said Mr. Ghoukasyan. "Since the
West is interested in undisruptible oil, Azerbaijan tries to beef up their price
for this stability. This emboldens Azerbaijan, making it more aggressive and
less willing to come to agreement."
What would an agreement look like?
"In any resolution, we think that
Karabakh should have physical land connection with Armenia," said Mr. Ghoukasyan.
At a press conference about
the BTC pipeline earlier this year, the
Azeri Ambassador told Inner City Press that
twenty percent of Azerbaijan's territory has been occupied by Armenia.
On the disputed numbers of displaced
people, Mr. Ghoukasyan quipped, "I always suspected they are bad in
mathematics." He estimated it, "maximally," to be 13%, and put the number of
displaced Azeris at "only" 650,000, rather than the one million figure used by
Azerbaijan. Mr. Ghoukasyan admonished, "There is information in books."
And so to the library went Inner City
Press. Therein it is recounted that while "in 1989, the Armenian Supreme Council
made Nagorno-Karabakh a part of Armenia, this decision was effectively annulled
by NKR declaring its independence in 1991. Whether the decision to declare
independence was made cooperatively with Yerevan is not yet known."
The UN's role is dismissed: "with one
exception the UN never condemned the capture of Lachin, the strategic link
between Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh. The UN passed Security Council Resolutions
822, 853, 874 and 884... Each UN resolution reiterated the international body's
support for the OSCE Minsk Group process."
Going back, some pundits blame the
conflict on Stalin: "he took a part of Armenia and gave it to Azerbaijan, and
now so many people are dying while trying to correct his foolish mistake. Now
redefining the borders is as painful as cutting someone's flesh when that person
is alive."
Fast forward to 1977, when the
Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast's first secretary from 1973 to 1988, Boris
Kevorkov, told visiting journalists that Karabakh Armenians were happily
separated from the Armenian republic, saying that "the history of Nagorny
(Mountainous) Karabakh is closely interwoven with Azerbaijan's... By contrast,
the region is close to Armenia geographically but is separated by high
mountains, which were an insuperable barrier in the past for any extensive
contacts." (Quoted in Claire Mouradian's "The Mountainouse Karabagh Question").
Also found are rebuttals, including from
Azeri poet Bakhtiyar Vahadzade in his 1988 Open Letter, that "since 1828, our
people have been divided into two parts," and that both Azeris and Karabakh
Armenians "emanate from the same ethnic stock: the Caucasian Albanians." Others
say Turkey always takes the Azeri side. There are references to the shoot-down
of an Iranian C-130 aircraft in 1994 as it crossed the Azeri-Karabakh line on
contact, and of Iran's demand for an apology.
Going back, a volume by Mazda Publishers
in Costa Mesa, California entitled "Two Chronicles on The History of Karabakh,"
contains the full texts of Tarikh-e Karabakh (History of Karabakh) by Mirza
Jamal Javanshir and of Karabakh-name by Mariza Adigozal Beg. In the
introduction, translator-from-Persian George A. Bournoutian reports that
"Armenian historians maintain that all of Karabakh was, at one time, part of the
Armenian kingdom and that the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh has had an
Armenian majority for several hundred years. Azeri historians assert that the
region was never part of Armenia and that the Armenian population arrived there
from Persia and the Ottoman empire after the Treaty of Turkmenchay (1828) when,
thanks to the Russian policy that favored Christians over Muslims, the Armenians
established a majority in what became Nagorno-Karabakh." In a footnote he
addresses nomenclature: "Nagorno-Karabakh is the Russian designation. The
Armenians call is [sic] Artsakh or Gharabagh and the Azeris Karabag."
Finally, on the question of numbers, Arif
Yunosov in "The Migration Situation in CIS Countries" opines that the conflict
has caused 353,000 Armenia refugees and 750,000 Azeris -- less than the one
million figure used by Azeri President Aliev, but large, and 100,000 larger than
acknowledged in the interview. And a more solid figure than Aliev's 20%, but
more than was acknowledged, is 13.62 percent. The search for truth continues. If
the comparison is to the original, Soviet-defined Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous
Oblast, it must be noted that NKR is claiming, beyond the Oblast, the territory
of Shahumian.
By the end of the interview, Mr.
Ghoukasyan was focusing on two regions of the old Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous
Oblast over which now Azerbaijan has de facto control: Martakert and Martuni.
While Mr. Ghoukasyan's point was that these should be subtracted from the 13
percent, they raise a larger question, that of break-aways from break-aways.
The analogy, to Inner City
Press, is to the serially-opening or
"nesting" Russian dolls.
Inside one republic is another, but inside the breakaway is another smaller
portion, that either wants to remain with the larger, or to itself be
independent. Northern Kosovo comes to mind, and the portion of Abkhazia into
which a
Tbilisi-based government is trying to
relocate.
How small can these Russian dolls become?
And how will the UN-debated status of Kosovo, now frozen into 2007, impact or
defrost other frozen conflicts? Developing.
Feedback: editorial
[at] innercitypress.com
UN Office: S-453A,
UN, NY 10017 USA Tel: 212-963-1439
Reporter's mobile: 718-716-3540
The UN
and Nagorno-Karabakh: Flurries of Activity Leave Frozen Conflicts Unchanged;
Updates on Gaza, Gavels and Gbagbo
Byline:
Matthew Russell Lee at the UN
UNITED
NATIONS, September 7 -- The UN General Assembly met past 6 p.m. Thursday to
approve by consensus a resolution entitled "The situation in the occupied
territories"... of Azerbaijan. Armenia disassociated itself from the consensus,
expressing its displeasure at the title and at the notion of its dispute with
Azerbaijan being considered in the UN. Other self-declared stakeholders in this
frozen conflict by proxy spoke before the resolution passed. The United States,
which considers itself an interested party with respect to every disagreement
and territory, spoke in favor of the resolution. So did Ukraine, on behalf of
"the GUAM states" -- Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Moldova. Turkey spoke in
favor, as did Pakistan on behalf of the Organization of the Islamic Conference.
All this
diplomatic firepower was brought to bear on a final resolution consisting of
five paragraphs, primarily directing the Organization for Security and
Cooperation in Europe to assess fires in the affected territories, to involve
the UN Environment Program in rehabilitation and to report back to the UN
General Assembly by April 30, 2007.
Still
waiting, per WFP
What were the two days of negotiations
about? asked an observer in the
General Assembly's cheap seats, where few of the headphones are working.
Armenia
does not want to the issue before the UN, and objects to the phrase "occupied
territories of Azerbaijan" when referring to Nagorno-Karabakh and environs.
If the UN
is involved in the Palestinian occupied territories, about which an UN agency
gave a briefing on Thursday, and in similar issues in Abkhazia, why has it not
been involved in Nagorno - Karabakh? What is the UN's involvement in Nagorno -
Karabakh?
The UN
Security Council passed four resolutions on Nagorno - Karabakh between April and
November of 1993. Resolution 822 called for a cessation of hostilities.
Resolutions 853, 874 and 884 continued in that vein. The ceasefire, such as it
was and is, was negotiated by Russia in May 1994. Since then the main venue of
action, or inaction, has been the 11-nation Minsk Group of the OSCE, with
Russia, France and the U.S. as co-chairs. Since all three are members of the UN
Security Council's Permanent Five, with veto rights, one might wonder why they
prefer this other venue. To assess UN involvement in the territories in 2006,
Inner City Press on Wednesday asked the UN Spokesman's Office. The oral answer
was that even the UN Development Program has no operations in Nagorno - Karabakh,
only the World Food Program. Then on Thursday the following was provided:
The Joint UNEP / OCHA Environment Unit has
been working in close collaboration with colleagues in UNEP, who have been in
direct contact with representatives from Azerbaijan and Armenia and the OSCE,
which sent a mission to the region in July of this year. The Joint Unit, through
our relationship with the Global Fire Monitoring Centre, which is our partner on
forest fire-related matters, identified experts last month who could,
potentially, go on an assessment mission. The OSCE has been requested to
undertake another mission and is considering it. It sought UNEP's advice on
experts, which in turn contacted the Joint Unit. We have, therefore, brokered a
relationship between the Global Fire Monitoring Centre and the OSCE. So our
identified experts are speaking with staff from OSCE. The Joint Unit will
continue to support all those involved in this issue.
There are
areas in the world which the UN does not impact via Security Council
resolutions, but in which it is a major humanitarian player. Nagorno-Karabakh,
like for another example
Casamance in Senegal,
is not one of those regions. It is sometimes said that if you live in a region
in the clutches of one of the Permanent Five members of the Security Council,
you're out of luck at the UN. But the list of those out of luck at the UN is
longer than that. And Nagorno - Karabakh... is on that list.
In the
General Assembly chamber, the scaffolding is now done, so the meeting was held
there. The first part of the meeting, headlined by Jan Eliasson and Mark Malloch
Brown, concerned conflict prevention. Sitting in the lower audience seats, few
of the headphones worked or provided sound. Sitting behind the S's, one could
see that among those nations not attending the GA session on conflict prevention
was... Sierra Leone, regarding which Secretary-General Kofi Annan recently
issued a report, S/2006/695, stating in part that "the continued border dispute
between Sierra Leone and Guinea remains a source of serious concern." While the
report does not name it, the dispute surrounds the diamond-rich town of Yenga.
As usual, follow the money.
Regarding
another, higher profile occupied territory, Thursday at noon the UN Relief and
Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) briefing on Gaza
revealed among other things that while the U.S.
Overseas Private Investment Corporation
says it will pay on its insurance policy on the Gaza power station,
rebuilding will take 18 months and power is for now sporadic.
At UN
Spokesman Stephane Dujarric's noon briefing, Inner City Press asked three
questions, one of which, concerning housing subsidies by governments to UN
employees, was summarily preempted with the statement that an answer will come
in the near future. On Cote D'Ivoire, where a
toxic dumping has resulted in the
disbanding of the cabinet, the
UN Spokesman responded that the Ivorian prime minister called the UN's head of
peacekeeping and, as usually, everyone should stay calm. The benefits of this
chaos to still-in-power Laurent Gbagbo are apparent to
some.
On whether the UN's
envoy on extra-judicial killings will as
requested visit Nigeria as well
as Lebanon, a response one supposes will come.
Mr. Dujarric's
sometimes-fellow briefer at noon, Pragati Pascale, gave a preview of the
afternoon's General Assembly action including on Nagorno - Karabakh, then
fielded following her statement about a gavel passing, fielded a strange but
concrete question about whether it was the same unique gavel, with wood looking
like flame, used when the budget cap was lifted. Even before 5 p.m. she
responded: " President Eliasson will, indeed, pass the fancy ceremonial gavel to
the incoming President. This was a gift to the General Assembly from Iceland.
President Eliasson did receive a copy of the gavel from the Secretary-General at
the end of the main part of the session last December, so he can take that home
as a remembrance of his time here." Speak, memory! So to their detriment say
those of Karabakh...
At the
UN, Micro-States Simmer Under the Assembly's Surface, While Incoming Council
President Dodges Most Questions
Byline:
Matthew Russell Lee at the UN
UNITED NATIONS,
September 5 -- Nagorno Karabakh, one of the world most frozen and forgotten
conflicts, surfaced at the UN on Tuesday, if only for ten minutes. The General
Assembly was scheduled to vote on a resolution concerning fires in the occupied
territories of Azerbaijan. The diplomats assembled, or began to assemble, at 4
p.m.. At 4:15 it was announced that in light of ongoing negotiations, the
meeting was cancelled, perhaps to reconvene Wednesday at 11:30.
Sources
close to the negotiations told Inner City Press that the rub is paragraph 4 of
the draft resolution, which requests that the Secretary-General report to the UN
General Assembly on the conflict. Armenia wants the matter to remain before the
Minsk Group of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which
has presided over the problem for more than a decade. Leading the OSCE's Minsk
Group are Russia, France and the United States, members of the veto-wielding
Permanent Five on the UN Security Council, nations which Azerbaijan claims have
ignored its sovereignty as well as blocking Security Council action, as for
example Russia has on Chechnya.
Of the
fires, Azerbaijan has characterized them as Armenian arson, and has asked for
international pressure to allow it to reach the disputed territories where the
fires have been.
Nagorno-Karabakh,
per WFP
At a July
13, 2006 briefing on the BTC pipeline, Inner City Press asked the Ambassador of
Azerbaijan Yashar Aliyev about the pipeline's avoidance of Armenia. We cannot
deal with them until they stop occupying our territory, Ambassador Aliyev said.
"You mean Nagorno - Karabakh?" Not only that, Amb. Aliyev answered. That's only
four percent. Few people know this, but Armenia has occupied twenty percent of
our territory.
Both
Amenia's Foreign Minister Vartan Oskanian and UN Ambassador Armen Martirosian
have said publicly in the past month that if Azerbaijan continues pushing the
issue before the United Nations, the existing peace talks will stop. Armenian
sources privately speak more darkly of an alliance of Georgia, Ukraine,
Azerbaijan and Moldova, collectively intent on involving the UN in reigning in
their breakaway regions including South Ossetia, Nagorno-Karabakh and
Transdniestria -- examples of what some call the micro-states. Armenia is
concerned that in the UN as opposed to OSCE, Azerbaijan might be able to rally
Islamic nations to its side.
It is not
only to predominantly Muslim nations that the Azeri's are reaching out. The
nation's foreign minister Elmar Mammadyarov met recently with this Swedish
counterpart Jan Eliasson, the outgoing president of the General Assembly.
Following
Tuesday's General Assembly postponement, Inner City Press asked Mr. Eliasson if,
in light of his involvement in reaching the 1994 cease-fire, he thinks the GA
might have more luck solving the Nagorno-Karabakh than the OSCE has.
"I hope
so," he said. "I'm in favor of an active General Assembly." He recounted his
shuttle diplomacy to Baku in the early 90s. And then he was gone.
Elsewhere
in the UN at Tuesday, the income president of the Security Council, Greek
Ambassador Adamantios Vassilakis held a press conference on the Council's plan
of work for September. Inner City Press
asked when
the Council will get the long-awaited briefing on violations of the arms embargo
on Somalia. Amb. Vassilakis responded about a meeting on September 25, at
Kenya's request, on the idea of the IGAD force in Somalia. Inner City Press
asked what has happened with the resolution on the Lord's Resistance Army of
which the UK has spoken so much. It will be up to them to introduce the motion,"
Amb. Vassilakis replied. He did not reply on the issue of the outstanding
International Criminal Court indictments against LRA leaders including Joseph
Kony and Vincent Otti.
Inner
City Press asked why, on Ivory Coast, the long-delayed report by the
Secretary-General's expert on the prevention of genocide has not been released.
In this response, Amb. Vassilakis grew animated, saying that one has to choose
between justice and peace. This implies that the finished report identifies
alleged perpetrators, as pertains to genocide, but is being withheld either to
facilitate peace, which has not come, or as negotiating leverage over some of
the perpetrators. To be continued, throughout the month.
At
the UN, from Casamance to Transdniestria, Kosovans to Lezgines, Micro-States as
Powerful's Playthings
Byline:
Matthew Russell Lee at the UN
UNITED NATIONS,
August 25 -- Because they are so often forgotten, today's report is
micro-states. The thread ran through UN Headquarters on Friday, from noon
briefing to stakeout to UNCA Club upstairs. Kofi Annan's spokesman on his way to
the podium stopped to tell Inner City Press not to ask certain questions. Some
involved the housing subsidy story below, one involved the Casamance region of
Senegal, where fighting is raging and refugees flee.
Thursday Inner City Press had asked who
in the UN, other than the refugee agency UNHCR, was addressing Casamance. Friday
the spokesman whispered, "On Casamance I don't have anything more than when
UNHCR has
said." So instead Inner City Press asked about a seminal micro-state,
Kosovo. At a press conference hours earlier in Pristina, the UN's mediator
Martii Ahtisaari had announced that no package will be put before the Security
Council in September. Inner City Press asked, but what of the postponed
municipal elections? Video
here,
at Minute 29.
The
spokesman's office arranged a conference call to UNMIK in Pristina, where the
acting press chief said no elections can be held in the winter anyway. The OSCE,
he said, estimates that to schedule elections takes at least six months. So much
for local democracy, even in areas run by the UN. Kofi Annan's incoming envoy
to Kosovo should have a better answer. We'll see. Other data the spokesman
belated provided on Friday is being analyzed.
The
micro-states theory is that if Kosovo becomes fully independent, the same will
happen -- or be called for by Russia -- in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, in
Transdniestria and even Ajara in Georgia. From this list we can drill down even
keeper. Inner City Press asked Kazakh Ambassador Yerzhan Kazykhanov about a
civil disturbance earlier in the week in
Aktau on the Caspian coast,
involving attacks on immigrants from the striving micro-state of Chechnya, on
Azeris and the little-known Lezgines, who come from Dagestan.
"There
are many groups," the Kazakh Ambassador said, adding that his recent flight from
Almaty to Aqtobe took nearly four hours. On the map he pointed at Oral and noted
that World War II passed through. In his prepared remarks, Kazakhstan's
Ambassador stressed, not without reason, that the "closure of the Semipalatinsk
testing site was one of the most significant events in the field of nuclear
disarmament." Asked about
Kazakhstan's joint anti-terror operations
with China in Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region,
like Chechnya another potential micro-state blocked by one of the Permanent Five
on the UN Security Council, the Kazakh Ambassador assured that the fighting of
terror has nothing to do with refugees. We'll see.
Slovakian
limbo per UNHCR
But back
to the micro-state of Casamance, which was part of what's now Guinea-Bissau
until France took it. The civil strife dates back at least to 1982, and yet the
UN and Security Council do nothing about it. At a stakeout interview on Friday
afternoon, Inner City Press asked the Council's president Nana Effah-Apenteng if
Casamance is on his radar. No, the Ghanaian Ambassador replied. "Maybe you are
more up-to-date on this issue than I am." Video
here,
at Minute 8:47. A well placed source upstairs at the UN noted that Senegal
keeps it quiet. As Chechnya is to Russia, in a sense, Casamance is to Senegal.
Ah, the micro-states...
At deadline in
Conference Room 3 in the basement, the disability rights convention was being
endlessly discussed. Ten days ago the chairman of the Ad Hoc
Committee on the Convention, Don MacKay, said that if current efforts to block
the creation of a treaty monitoring body are successful, the Convention may well
not be enacted. "And that would be shabby treatment," Mr. MacKay said, citing a
long history of societies' discrimination against the disabled.
Click
here for
video and
here for
the text of the draft Convention.
Inner City Press asked if the United
States is among the countries opposing any monitoring of countries' performance
under the Convention, similar to the approach the U.S. took in derailing the
Small Arms meeting at the UN earlier this year. Mr. MacKay acknowledged that the
U.S. is among six or seven countries raising such concerns, but stated that the
U.S. position does not seem "doctrinal" or doctrinaire.
The afternoon the conference would wrap up, the UN briefer Thomas Schindlmayr
resisted naming the countries opposed for example to the reference to countries'
occupation. One journalist loudly left the room. Later this list
became clear, including the U.S., Australia, Israel. And at 7:52 p.m., amid
applause, the report was adopted.
Other Inner City Press
reports are archived on
www.InnerCityPress.org -
Congo Shootout
Triggers Kofi Annan Call, While Agent Orange Protest Yields Email from
Old London
On the UN -
Corporate Beat, Dow Chemical Luncheon Chickens Come Home to Roost
UN Bets the
House on Lebanon, While Willfully Blind in Somalia and Pinned Down in
Kinshasa
Stop Bank
Branch Closings and Monopolies in the Katrina Zone, Group Says,
Challenging Regions- AmSouth Merger
Ship-Breakers
Missed by UN's Budget for Travel and Consultants in Bangladesh, Largest
UNIFIL Troop Donor
Sudan Cites
Hezbollah, While UN Dances Around Issues of Consent and Sex Abuse in the
Congo, Passing the UNIFIL Hat
With Somalia on
the Brink of Horn-Wide War, UN Avoids Question of Ethiopian Invasion
In UN's Lebanon
Frenzy, Darfur Is Ignored As Are the Disabled, "If You Crave UNIFIL,
Can't You Make Do With MONUC?"
UN Decries
Uzbekistan's Use of Torture, While Helping It To Tax and Rule; Updates
on UNIFIL and UNMIS Off-Message
At the UN,
Lebanon Resolution Passes with Loophole, Amb. Gillerman Says It Has All
Been Defensive
On Lebanon,
Russian Gambit Focuses Franco-American Minds, Short Term Resolution Goes
Blue Amid Flashes of Lightening
Africa Can Solve
Its Own Problems, Ghanaian Minister Tells Inner City Press, On LRA Peace
Talks and Kofi Annan's Views
At the UN, Jay-Z
Floats Past Questions on Water Privatization and Sweatshops, Q'Orianka
Kilcher in the Basement
In the UN
Security Council, Speeches and Stasis as Haiti is Forgotten, for a
Shebaa Farms Solution?
UN Silence on
Congo Election and Uranium, Until It's To Iran or After a Ceasefire, and
Council Rift on Kony
At the UN Some
Middle Eastern Answers, Updates on Congo and Nepal While Silence on
Somalia
On Lebanon,
Franco-American Resolution Reviewed at UN in Weekend Security Council
Meeting
UN Knew of Child
Soldier Use by Two Warlords Whose Entry into Congo Army the UN
Facilitated
Impunity's in
the Air, at the UN in Kinshasa and NY, for Kony and Karim and MONUC for
Kazana
UN Still Silent
on Somalia, Despite Reported Invasion, In Lead-Up to More Congo Spin
UN's Guehenno
Says Congo Warlord Just Needs Training, and Kazana Probe Continues
With Congo
Elections Approaching, UN Issues Hasty Self-Exoneration as Annan Is
Distracted
In DR Congo, UN
Applauds Entry into Army of Child-Soldier Commander Along with Kidnapper
Spinning the
Congo, UN Admits Hostage Deal with Warlord That Put Him in Congolese
Army
At the UN, Dow
Chemical's Invited In, While Teaming Up With Microsoft is Defended
Kofi Annan
Questioned about Congolese Colonel Who Kidnapped Seven UN Soldiers
At the UN,
Speeches While Gaza Stays Lightless and Insurance Not Yet Paid
At the UN
Poorest Nations Discussed, Disgust at DRC Short Shrift, Future UN
Justice?
At the UN
Wordsmiths Are At Work on Zimbabwe, Kony, Ivory Coast and Iran
UN Silent As
Congolese Kidnapper of UN Peacekeepers Is Made An Army Colonel: News
Analysis
At
the UN, New Phrase Passes Resolution called Gangster-Like by North Korea; UK
Deputy on the Law(less)
UN's Guehenno
Speaks of "Political Overstretch" Undermining Peacekeeping in Lower
Profile Zones
In Gaza Power
Station, the Role of Enron and the U.S. Government's OPIC Revealed by UN
Sources
At UN, North
Korean Knot Attacked With Fifty Year Old Precedent, Game Continues Into
Weekend
UN's Corporate
Partnerships Will Be Reviewed, While New Teaming Up with Microsoft, and
UNDP Continues
Gaza Resolution
Vetoed by U.S., While North Korea Faces Veto and Chechnya Unread
BTC Briefing,
Like Pipeline, Skirts Troublespots, Azeri Revelations
Conflicts of
Interest in UNHCR Program with SocGen and Pictet Reveal Reform Rifts
At the UN, A Day
of Resolutions on Gaza, North Korea and Iran, Georgia as Side Dish
UN Grapples with
Somalia, While UNDP Funds Mugabe's Human Rights Unit, Without
Explanation
In North Korean
War of Words, Abuses in Uganda and Impunity Go Largely Ignored
On North Korea,
Blue Words Move to a Saturday Showdown, UNDP Uzbek Stonewall
As the World
Turns in Uganda and Korea, the UN Speaks only on Gaza, from Geneva
North Korea in
the UN: Large Arms Supplant the Small, and Confusion on Uganda
UN Gives Mugabe
Time with His Friendly Mediator, Refugees Abandoned
At the UN,
Friday Night's Alright for Fighting; Annan Meets Mugabe
UN Acknowledges
Abuse in Uganda, But What Did Donors Know and When? Kazakh Questions
In Uganda, UNDP
to Make Belated Announcement of Program Halt, But Questions Remain (and
see
The New Vision,
offsite).
Disarmament
Abuse in Uganda Leads UN Agency to Suspend Its Work and Spending
Disarmament
Abuse in Uganda Blamed on UNDP, Still Silent on Finance
Alleged Abuse in
Disarmament in Uganda Known by UNDP, But Dollar Figures Still Not Given:
What Did UN Know and When?
Strong Arm on
Small Arms: Rift Within UN About Uganda's Involuntary Disarmament of
Karamojong Villages
UN in Denial on
Sudan, While Boldly Predicting the Future of Kosovo/a
UN's Selective
Vision on Somalia and Wishful Thinking on Uighurs
UN Habitat
Predicts The World Is a Ghetto, But Will Finance Be Addressed at
Vancouver World Urban Forum?
At the UN, a
Commando Unit to Quickly Stop Genocide is Proposed, by Diplomatic Sir
Brian Urquhart
UN's Annan
Concerned About Use of Terror's T-Word to Repress, Wants
Freedom of Information
UN Waffles on
Human Rights in Central Asia and China; ICC on Kony and a Hero from
Algiers
At the UN,
Internal Justice Needs Reform, While in Timor Leste, Has Evidence Gone
Missing?
UN & US,
Transparency for Finance But Not Foreign Affairs: Somalia, Sovereignty
and Senator Tom Coburn
In Bolton's Wake,
Silence and Speech at the UN, Congo and Kony, Let the Games Begin
Pro-Poor Talk and
a Critique of the World Trade Organization from a WTO Founder: In UN
Lull, Ugandan Fog and Montenegrin Mufti
Human Rights
Forgotten in UN's War of Words, Bolton versus Mark Malloch Brown: News
Analysis
In Praise of
Migration, UN Misses the Net and Bangalore While Going Soft on Financial
Exclusion
UN Sees Somalia
Through a Glass, Darkly, While Chomsky Speaks on Corporations and
Everything But Congo
AIDS Ends at the
UN? Side Deals on Patents, Side Notes on Japanese Corporations,
Salvadoran and Violence in Burundi
On AIDS at the
UN, Who Speaks and Who Remains Unseen
Corporate Spin on
AIDS, Holbrooke's Kudos to Montenegro and its Independence (May 31, 2006)
Kinshasa Election
Nightmares, from Ituri to Kasai. Au Revoir Allan Rock; the UN's
Belly-Dancing
Working with
Warlords, Insulated by Latrines: Somalia and Pakistan Addressed at the
UN
The Silence of
the Congo and Naomi Watts; Between Bolivia and the World Bank
Human Rights
Council Has Its Own Hanging Chads; Cocky U.S. State Department Spins
from SUVs
Child Labor and
Cargill and Nestle; Iran, Darfur and WHO's on First with Bird Flu
Press Freedom?
Editor Arrested by Congo-Brazzaville, As It Presides Over Security
Council
The
Place of the Cost-Cut UN in Europe's Torn-Up Heart;
Deafness to Consumers, Even by the Greens
Background Checks
at the UN, But Not the Global Compact; Teaching Statistics from
Turkmenbashi's Single Book
Ripped Off Worse
in the Big Apple, by Citigroup and Chase: High Cost Mortgages Spread in
Outer Boroughs in 2005, Study Finds
Burundi: Chaos at
Camp for Congolese Refugees, Silence from UNHCR, While Reform's Debated
by Forty Until 4 AM
In Liberia, From
Nightmare to Challenge; Lack of Generosity to Egeland's CERF, Which
China's Asked About
The Chadian
Mirage: Beyond French Bombs, Is Exxon In the Cast? Asylum and the
Uzbeks, Shadows of Stories to Come
Through the UN's
One-Way Mirror, Sustainable Development To Be Discussed by Corporations,
Even Nuclear Areva
Racial
Disparities Grew Worse in 2005 at Citigroup, HSBC and Other Large Banks
Mine Your Own
Business: Explosive Remnants of War and the Great Powers, Amid the
Paparazzi
Human Rights Are
Lost in the Mail: DR Congo Got the Letter, But the Process is Still
Murky
Iraq's Oil to be
Metered by Shell, While Basrah Project Remains Less than Clear
At the UN, Dues
Threats and Presidents-Elect, Unanswered Greek Mission Questions
Kofi, Kony,
Kagame and Coltan: This Moment in the Congo and Kampala
As Operation
Swarmer Begins, UN's Qazi Denies It's Civil War and Has No Answers if
Iraq's Oil is Being Metered
Cash Crop: In
Nepal, Bhutanese Refugees Prohibited from Income Generation Even in
their Camps
The Shorted and
Shorting in Humanitarian Aid: From Davos to Darfur, the Numbers Don't
Add Up
UN Reform:
Transparency Later, Not Now -- At Least Not for AXA - WFP Insurance
Contract
In Congolese
Chaos, Shots Fired at U.N. Helicopter Gunship
In the Sudanese
Crisis, Oil Revenue Goes Missing, UN Says
Empty Words on
Money Laundering and Narcotics, from the UN and Georgia
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
Post-Tsunami
Human Rights Abuses, including by UNDP in the Maldives
Who Pays for the
Global Bird Flu Fight? Not the Corporations, So Far - UN
Citigroup
Dissembles at United Nations Environmental Conference
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