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At UN, Mauritania's Coup Is Just "Corrective Change," Pre-
and Post-Coup
Ambassador Says
Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of
Inner City
Press at the UN: News Analysis
UNITED
NATIONS, August 19 -- Mauritania's coup of
August 6 was addressed by
the UN Security Council 13 days after it took place. Surreally, the
same
Ambassador who represented the country pre-coup continued in his post,
now
praising the new powers and calling the coup a mere "corrective
change." This Ambassador, Abderrahim
Ould Hadrami, gave a speech in the Council in which he said that up
until the
elections earlier this decade, Mauritania had been a dictatorship. But
he
himself represented what he admitted was a dictatorship, in Paris from
1977 to
1979 and to the United
Nations in 1982.
Inner City Press asked about freedom of the press,
specifically about a
journalist named Ahmed Ould Neda
who was arrested for covering an anti-coup
demonstration on August 7.
Abderrahim Ould Hadrami called that an "isolated
case," adding
that a demonstration by coup opponents will be allowed tomorrow, August
20. Video here.
But
last month saw the arrests of Mohamed Nema Omar the publisher of Al Houriya and of Mohamed Ould Abdelatif,
a reporter for the paper, for
their coverage of the courts in Mauritania. Will they be released?
Ban Ki-moon and Abderrahim
Ould Hadrami, consistency not shown
After this month's Council president Jan Grauls read
out a Presidential
Statement condemning the coup and calling for an immediate return to
Constitutional order -- such as it was -- Inner City Press asked
Ambassador
Grauls how Mauritania could have the same Permanent Representative
before and
after the coup, and how he could call it a mere corrective change.
Grauls
laughed and said, "These diplomats find nice ways to say things. In
Europe,
no one loses their job, enterprises are 'restructured.' Same thing
here."
News analysis: These was something mechanical and pro forma
about the Security Council only getting around to belatedly
"condemning" the coup two weeks after it happened. Western diplomats,
in an exercise of spin, told Inner City Press that they thought it
would look
better to wait and follow the African Union.
Abderrahim Ould Hadrami said that the African Union,
and by implication
the UN Security Council, had to criticize the coup as a "matter of
policy," but that the new military government is reaching out to the
AU.
We'll see.
Watch
this
site. And this (on
South Ossetia), and
this --
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