Exclusive:
UN's Budget Cut Pushback
Includes Stealth Hill Visits,
Clinton & Banning the Press
By Matthew
Russell Lee, Exclusive Series
UNITED NATIONS,
March 11 – Facing budget cuts,
even on a delay, how does
today's UN react? Stealthly,
is the answer. Recently in the
UN basement as Inner City
Press came in late through a
long line of tourists and
students at the metal
detectors Inner City Press
must now use everyday since
the UN evicted
it for covering corruption,
a meeting in a windowless side
conference room was ending.
Outside in the hall it was
labeled, Congressional Group.
But inside
on a TV screen it said,
“UN Foundation: Congressional
Learning Trip.” UN Foundation
was set up, with Ted Turner's
money, to help and now defend
the UN. The UN's point person
on sexual abuse, long a topic
of interest for such
Republicans as Senator Bob
Corker (R-Tennessee), is Jane
Holl Lute, who before that was
a high official of the UN
Foundation and of the Obama
Administration. She was
notably absent this week when
a “new” sexual abuse strategy,
immediately critiqued
by Code Blue and others, was
announced. We'll have more on
that.
Down
in Washington, Democratic
sources on the Hill tell Inner
City Press of a visit by the
Obama administration's
appointee to the UN, Jeffrey
Feltman. Strangely, perhaps,
they list the topic not as
involving only Feltman's
specific UN job, the
Department of Political
Affairs he has been held over
to head until April Fools Day
in 2018, but “budget cuts to
peacekeeping.” The head of
that Department, held by
France for more than 20 years,
should be the one lobbying.
But Herve Ladsous is
unappealing in the best of
times; now he is a lame duck
leaving on March 31, to be
replaced by his fellow
Frenchman Jean-Pierre Lacroix.
Will Lacroix be able to stave
off cuts? Will he continue to
use public funds, more than a
quarter of it from US
taxpayers, to pay peacekeepers
accused of rape such as in the
contingents from Burundi
and Cameroon?
Inner City Press exclusively
reported and followed
up on the extension of
Jeffrey Feltman's UN contract
with regard to his UN (largely
US taxpayer) pension vesting
after the five years which
Feltman recently pointed out
has not yet been reached, but
not until now how those close
to Feltman say it was
accomplished. They exclusively
tell Inner City Press that
among the lobbyists to keep
Feltman on was none other than
Bill Clinton, whom they say
said it on behalf of his
spouse, behind whom Feltman
was famously photographed
while she worked her
Blackberry.
Speaking of photographs, Inner
City Press on March 10, still
under censorship restrictions
imposed without
any hearing or appeal after it
sought to cover the fallout
from the UN bribery indictment
of Macau-based businessman and
former Clinton funder
Ng Lap Seng, was Banned
from a simple photo
opportunity on the UN's 38th
floor. The Ban's by the
Department of Public
Information under ostensibly
outgoing Cristina Gallach, who
did no
due diligence on Ng Lap
Seng. When asked the basis, the
UN's holdover Deputy Spokesman
Farhan Haq gave no reason or
definition being used; he
barely looked up from his
computer, from which he never
did answer Inner City Press' questions
on Cameroon abuses and the
UN's Cameroon Resident
Coordinator Najat Rochdi blocking
it on Twitter, nor how much
"extra-budgetary" funds the UN
proposes to use on Louise
Arbour's D1 head of office.
The
moves are stealth, like much
in the UN these days - and
have the potential of
backfiring. Watch this site.
***
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