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In
SaudiLeaks,
$100,000 for
HRC Seat, How
to Invite UNCA
for Kingdom
Coverage
By Matthew
Russell Lee
UNITED
NATIONS, June
21 -- Among
the documents
released in
the first
batch of Saudi
cables by
Wikileaks is
one allocating
$100,000 for
Saudi Arabia's
run for a seat
on the UN
Human Rights
Council, here.
It remains to
be seen what
was bought
with that
money. One
also wonders,
how much then
was the UN
Security
Council seat
that Saudi
Arabia “won,”
then
relinquished,
worth? (Click
here
for Inner City
Press story
on the
relinquishment.)
Many of the
documents are
mundane: the scheduling of
trips to
the Kingdom by
then-Yemen
envoy Jamal
Benomar,
for example,
and by Terje
Roed-Larsen.
There is a receipt
for a
contribution
to the UN
Mission in
Burundi,
and back and
forth on the secondment of
Al-Sadoon.
On the
financial
front there is
a “To Whom It
May Concern” memo
by the UN
Federal Credit
Union
recounting how
UNFCA made a
loan to a
Sudanese
national,
through a
Saudi bank, to
build a house
in Sudan, then
a mention of
applicable US
sanctions.
Incongruously,
there is a newsletter
about the
French forces
in Gabon,
here.
At
least in the
first batch, a
search for
"blogger" or
"Badawi"
results in a
single
document: an email from
Swedish
classical
guitarist
Celia Linde
urging that he
not be
flogged.
On the
purchased
media front,
there is now
to begin with
a memo
about the UN
Correspondents
Association,
how its
members can be
invited to
cover
conferences in
the Kingdom.
We'll have
more on this.
* * *
These
reports
are
usually also available through Google
News and on Lexis-Nexis.
Click here
for Sept 26, 2011 New Yorker on Inner City
Press at UN
Click
for
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Corruption
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