On
Indian Minister Krishna Hits NY on UN Seat, Not Veto or
Student Surveillance
By
Matthew
Russell Lee
UNITED
NATIONS,
February 9 -- With Indian External Affairs minister S.M.
Krishna coming to New York for a day and a half, India's
Permanent
Representative to the UN Hardeep Singh Puri briefed the Press on
his
minister's program, with a heavy emphasis on UN Security Council
reform.
Surprisingly,
Krishna
has no meeting scheduled with UN Secretary General Ban
Ki-moon, nor with any US official to discuss the the situation,
including
ankle bracelets, facing Indian students from the closed
down Tri Valley University, an issue Krishna has said he will pursue
with the US.
Rather,
Krishna
will meet with fellow “G4” foreign ministers of Brazil, Japan and
Germany, in town for a Security Council debate sponsored by Brazil on
security and development. The four have scheduled a short press
availability for Friday after the Security Council meeting.
Hardeep
Singh
Puri continues to predict Security Council reform, or a vote, by
early 2012. Wednesday he said that the question of having veto power
could be deferred until after new permanent seats were given out,
arguing that the veto is so infrequently used now it may not be
important.
Inner
City Press
asked him if the lack of the veto being used is a product of
proposals that would be vetoed not coming up for a vote, like the
resolution on Israeli settlements. Hardeep Singh Puri replied that
this resolution may well come up for a vote.
Having
been told
by African members of the Security Council that a move is coming soon
to ask the Council to vote to suspend the International Criminal
Court prosecution of Sudanese president Omar al Bashir for genocide
and war crimes in Darfur, Inner City Press asked Hardeep Singh Puri
if he thought such a resolution would be vetoed.
That
hasn't come
up yet, he replied. UK Ambassador Mark Lyall Grant, when Inner City
Press asked him earlier on Wednesday for the UK's position on such a
proposal also declined to comment.
UN's Ban and Krishna in past: not repeated this time?
Inner
City Press
and then an Indian television station asked Hardeep Singh Puri about
Tri Valley University, whose students are now subject to ankle
bracelet monitoring pending being thrown out of the country, their
student visas revoked.
Hardeep Singh
Puri said Krishna might meet
with some of the students. While despite his candor he didn't say it,
Krishna would not be able even to meet with US Permanent Representative
Susan Rice: she's left for the West Coast to give a speech, and won't
be in the UN on Friday for the ministerial thematic debate.
After the session at the Indian Mission, Inner City Press
was jovially chided for raising questions beyond the UN. How about Sri
Lanka's killing of Tamil fishermen, then? And on the UN beat, what
about India's chairmanship of the Somalia sanctions committee, in light
of reports of mercenaries there? Watch this site.
* * *
With
UN
Panel
Blocked
from Sri Lanka, Ban Says “There Was An Agreement"
By
Matthew
Russell
Lee
UNITED
NATIONS,
February
8
-- On Sri Lanka, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon
on Tuesday insisted to Inner City Press that “there was an
agreement” and that his “Panel will visit Sri Lanka.”
But
not only have
seven weeks gone by since Ban praised President Mahinda Rajapaksa for
his “flexibility” and announced his Panel on Accountability would
go -- since then, a range of UN officials have acknowledged that Sri
Lanka has now refused to let the UN Panel go and speak with
Rajapaksa's Lessons Learnt & Reconciliation Commission.
Inner
City
Press
has
it from both sides that the UN is now offering a mere video
conference call or even answers to written questions.
So much for
the agreement.
Left
unanswered, still, is with whom
the stated
agreement was.
UN's Ban & M. Rajapaksa in 9/10, agreement not shonw
From the UN's
transcript of Q&A with Mr. Ban on
Tuesday:
Inner
City
Press:
Sri
Lanka – I need to ask you this. In both of your
two last monthly press conferences, you said that your Panel was
going to travel to the country, you praised President Rajapaksa’s
flexibility. It now appears, and I’ve now heard from people on
both sides that the Panel is probably not going to go, that they’ve
offered a video conference. I just wondered what happened. Who did
you speak with before you said that they could go and how do you read
this now, with their failure to go, as the deadline approaches?
SG
Ban:
I
can
tell you that there was an agreement and that my Panel
will visit Sri Lanka and they are still discussing about the format
and their role in Sri Lanka. And whenever it is decided, I will let
you know.
{Inner
City
Press:
If
they don't go, their work is not finished?}
SG
Ban:
I
didn’t
say that they [wouldn’t] go.
{Inner
City
Press:
They
will go?}
SG
Ban:
They
will
try to go anyway.
Watch this site.
Earlier
on
Tuesday,
the EU's Catherine Ashton told Inner City Press that
Sri Lanka's "
government
usually
doesn't
allow things like that. The
President took the power to prevent independent inquiry, wouldn't
allow someone in to do the inquiry into GSP Plus, which meant that it
was much more complicated. So the words 'the government doesn't
allow' are not unusual.”
