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At UN, High-Level Friends of Myanmar Meet But Few
Speak, As Cambodia Is Urged to be Quiet
Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of
Inner City Press at the UN: News Analysis
UNITED NATIONS,
July 23 -- Even before
Cyclone
Nargis,
"the Gambari mission produced very little
concrete results," U.S. Ambassador to the UN Zalmay Khalilzad told the
Press
on Wednesday as he left the closed-door Friends of Myanmar meeting
attended by
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and his envoy to Yangon, Ibrahim
Gambari.
Khalilzad said that a focus group of China, Indonesia and India has
been formed,
and that post-cyclone "reconstruction has to be tied to political
progress... time-bound negotiations, elections in 2010 and the release
of
prisoners including Aung San Suu Kyi." He said there will by a Security
Council discussion on July 24, and "maybe something by the
Secretary-General."
As the
meeting broke up, with Ban Ki-moon still in the room, Gambari set up by
the
door and shook Ambassadors' hands. The level of representation from the
Permanent Five members of the Security Council was telling. The UK like
the
U.S. and Russia sent its Permanent Representative, as did Singapore,
among
others. France was represented by its Deputy, Jean-Pierre Lacroix.
China's
representation may have been at a more junior level.
When Ban
Ki-moon emerged, he told the three reporters waiting that "a statement
will be issued," that he was in a rush. Gambari too, declined to speak
with the reporters, saying that a statement will be issued "today or
tomorrow." Perhaps he too was in a hurry, or perhaps he had been
advised,
against his recent and laudable
instinct to openness, not to talk with journalists. Practically, in
this case
silence meant that while the U.S. criticized Gambari performance, or
what he
has emerged from his previous trips to Myanmar with, there was no
response.
UN boat in Cambodia, 1993, Myanmar in 2008, and exchange
rate, not shown
Is the
U.S. wrong for issuing statements upon leaving a still-ongoing meeting?
Or is the
UN wrong for declining to speak, and allowing bureaucracy to delay for
a day
even the issuance of a bland summary of a meeting? On July 21, it took
the
Secretariat five hours to issue a statement hailing the arrest of
Radovan
Karadzic. How many approvals were required?
Forward-looking footnote, for now:
on another Asian country now
approaching the Security Council's agenda, Cambodia, Inner City Press
was told
Wednesday by diplomats that informal consultations will be held on
Thursday
regarding the format of the meeting that Cambodia has requested about
what it
calls Thailand's "grave threat to the sovereignty and territorial
integrity of Cambodia" in connection with the now UNESCO-listed World
Heritage site at Preah Vihear. Click here for
Cambodia's letter, which Inner City Press is putting online.
An ASEAN
diplomat told Inner City Press "we were all very surprised Cambodia
made
that request, when there are still bilateral channels available to
solve the
dispute." Another diplomat and wag, referring to Gambari and the
"scant results" of his previous trips to Myanmar, said if no
commitments are made by the Than Shwe government this time, Gambari
"should just stay there." It could get expensive -- click here for Inner
City Press' most recent story about the money the UN loses to the Than
Shwe
government due to currency exchange through Foreign Exchange
Certificates. Watch this site.
And
this --
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