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Sri
Lanka and Responsibility to
Protect Arise in UN, Would Ban Take to Council?
Byline: Matthew
Russell Lee of
Inner City Press at the UN: News Analysis
UNITED NATIONS, May 8 --
With bombs dropping on civilians in Northern Sri Lanka
and UN Secretary General Ban
Ki-moon still mulling the government's invitation
to visit, the talk at the UN has turned to the Responsibility
to Protect. On
May 6 at a reception attended by Ban Ki-moon and Ed Luck, his special
adviser
on R2P, as it known, Inner City Press asked Luck
how the concept would apply to
Sri Lanka. "To both sides," Luck answered.
He noted that R2P was formally cited during Kofi
Annan's mediation in
Kenya.
Inner City Press asked what he thought of the appointment of former
Indian Ambassador Nirupam Sen as the adviser to the President of the
General
Assembly on R2P. While diplomatically praising Sen, Luck remarked that
India
was the "last country to come aboard" on the R2P Outcome Document in
2005.
In May 7, Inner City Press asked Nirupam Sen for his
views on R2P,
specifically regarding Sri Lanka. While refusing to answer on Sri
Lanka, Sen
insisted first the India wasn't the last to join consensus in 2005,
then that
it had only held out to make the points of "U.S. civil society
groups." Sen said that India's position had been that R2P should only
be a
UN doctrine if the use of the Security Council veto by five countries
were
repealed, to "eliminate the strategic imperatives of any great power."
Video here,
from Minute 41:42.
Ironically, it is China's and to some degree
Russia's veto threats which
have kept the carnage in Sri Lanka off of the Council's formal agenda,
and keep
the Council "dialogues" on the topic confined to the basement.
Inner City Press asked asked Sen about Sri
Lanka's application to the
International Monetary Fund for a $1.9 billion loan, and whether
the bloodshed
and internment camps in the North should be considered. Sen said that
"anything the IMF does to reduce and tone down conditionality is a step
in
the right direction," toward "mitigating humanitarian impact."
But what if the loan is used to involuntarily relocate and detain
people? The
IMF wouldn't do that, Sen implied. But wouldn't they?
Nirupam Sen as Ambassador in Council, Ban and R2P
not shown
On May 8, Inner City Press asked a senior Ban
adviser about Sri Lanka's
invitation. I don't think the Secretary General should go, the adviser
replied.
The government could just use it. He suggested that, instead, Ban
should invoke
Article 99 of the UN Charter and push to put Sri Lanka on the Council's
agenda,
in the name of R2P. The draft outcome document gives the Secretary
General that
role, Ban's adviser said. Inner City Press asked Ban's Deputy
Spokesperson
about this an hour later, but she said she had nothing to add to what
Ban had
said on May 5.
Ban's Deputy Spokesperson announced on Friday an
upcoming trip by Ban,
not to Sri Lanka but Manama, Bahrain. To many these seem to be strange
priorities.
Inner City Press
asked French Ambassador Jean-Maurice Ripert if his foreign minister
Bernard Kouchner, another major player in R2P, is requesting a Security
Council session on May 11, when he and his UK counter-part David
Miliband will be in New York. Ripert said, "On the side of the meeting
on the Middle East... we are organizing with UK a meeting... we are
working on the exact form." Video here,
from Minute 10:53.
Footnote 1: According to
NGO sources, Ambassador Ripert in a recent meeting with them said, of
Sri Lanka's Army, "their war is our war," which the NGOs took to mean
the "war on terror." Some wondered if this didn't just give a
green light to the Sri Lankan Army. We'll see: we will report on this
site any response received, on France's view of Sri Lanka (or in
advance of the Council's trip to Africa next week of MONUC in the
Congo appearing in a memo in French to work with a war criminal.)
Footnote 2: In what
could be called
an R2P cat fight, Nirupan Sen's criticism of Ban's adviser Ed Luck went
further, when Sen said the Fifth (Budget) Committee was right to refuse
to
confirm him in his post, and to keep him on "a dollar a year." Inner
City Press asked Luck about the dollar, and if he has a UN phone
number. Of the
latter, Luck said he still doesn't, but that at the UN there are many
people
with phones but the Secretary General doesn't pick up at the other end.
And if
the call came from the Vanni conflict zone, would Mr. Ban pick up?
On May 6, Inner City
Press asked Ban's spokesperson about a widely seen piece on Britain's
Channel
4, filmed in an IDP camp with allegations, on camera, of the
disappearance and
rape of young women. Video here,
from Minute 17:42. "You know I do not comment on press reports,"
the spokesperson said. "I haven't seen it, and I don't think the S-G
has
seen it either." Well maybe he should:
Channel
4 in the UK with allegations of rape and
disappearance
Footnote:
We continue to wait for the
UK's formal answer to the first of the two
questions which Inner
City
Press asked the UK Mission to
the UN two questions on Sri Lanka early on April 15:
Does the UK
believe that international law and the
rights of UN humanitarian staff are being violated by the
now-acknowledged
detention of UN staff in the Sri Lankan government's “IDP” camps?
It has been reported
this morning that Sri Lanka's “minister also told the
British
Foreign Secretary that there was concern that the LTTE would
continue to
consolidate its fortification of the No-Fire Zone.” Please confirm the
accuracy
of that, and of this
and if so, does the UK interpret it as saying that
an offensive on the No-Fire Zone and the civilians in it will begin?
What did
the UK Foreign Secretary say?
As
of
this press time weeks later, the formal answer has been
referral to Minister
Miliband's April 12
statement, and this.
On April 21, Inner City Press put the question to U.S. Ambassador Susan
Rice, whose spokesman the following day cleared this response:
"UN personnel should have freedom of movement and be treated with
respect." But they are still detained as of this writing. As more
answers arrive or are released we will report them on this site.
Click here
for an Inner City Press YouTube channel video, mostly UN Headquarters
footage, about civilian
deaths
in Sri Lanka.
Click here for Inner City
Press' March 27 UN debate
Click here for Inner City
Press March 12 UN (and AIG
bailout) debate
Click here for Inner City
Press' Feb 26 UN debate
Click
here
for Feb.
12 debate on Sri Lanka http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/17772?in=11:33&out=32:56
Click here for Inner City Press' Jan.
16, 2009 debate about Gaza
Click here for Inner City Press'
review-of-2008 UN Top Ten debate
Click here for Inner
City Press' December 24 debate on UN budget, Niger
Click here from Inner City Press'
December 12 debate on UN double standards
Click here for Inner
City Press' November 25 debate on Somalia, politics
and this October 17 debate, on
Security Council and Obama and the UN.
* * *
These
reports are
usually also available through Google
News and on Lexis-Nexis.
Click here
for a Reuters
AlertNet piece by this correspondent
about Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army. Click
here
for an earlier Reuters AlertNet piece about the Somali
National
Reconciliation Congress, and the UN's $200,000 contribution from an
undefined trust fund. Video
Analysis here
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