Inner City Press -- Investigative Reporting From the Inner City to Wall Street to the United Nations

Zimbabwe Opposition Calls UN Agencies Complicit, Not Helping Refugees, Council Action Blocked

Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at the UN: News Analysis

UNITED NATIONS, April 29 -- The funds and programs of the UN have been "complicit" and "incestuous" with the Robert Mugabe government in Zimbabwe, Tendai Biti of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change told the press on Tuesday. Following a closed-door briefing of the Security Council by UN political chief Lynn Pascoe, UK Deputy Permanent Representative Karen Pierce emerged to predict that in May, when the UK has the Council presidency, an open meeting on the topic will be held. Inner City Press asked her for the UK's response to the MDC's critique of UN agencies' support of Mugabe. Amb. Pierce focused on the UN's food and other humanitarian aid. She did not address the degree to which such aid, particular the "capacity building" offered without standards by the UN Development Program, may serve to prop up what the UK calls regimes or dictatorships, in Zimbabwe, Myanmar and elsewhere.

            Inner City Press' question to Mr. Biti resulted in his description of the MDC office on Nelson Mandela Avenue in Harare being full of "internal refugees," compared to a near-empty UN space he described nearby. UK Ambassador Pierce said she had not been aware of this. She is, however, in a position to do something about it.

BAN and Morgan Tsvangirai: planned or not, what have you done for me lately?

            U.S. Deputy Permanent Representative Alejandro Wolff was asked, " Zimbabwe's Ambassadors made a lot – a number of times made the comparison to Florida in 2000 and said this is a vote dispute.  Do you see anything to that analogy?  They're saying it took six weeks then, why not six weeks for them? "

Ambassador Wolff replied, as transcribed by the U.S. mission, "I'm not even going to comment.  It’s a ludicrous comparison and all you have to do is talk to the Zimbabwean opposition and see what their views are on how America conducts its elections." But are they the right one's to ask?

            South African Ambassador Dumisani Kumalo, responding to Wolff's comments, said that countries have elections, some of them do it well, some not so well.  He noted that SADC and the African Union are involved, and that the Mugabe government has invited a team from the World Food Program to come and visit the country. As to the UN's so-called "good offices," Kumalo said this should not be discussed in the Security Council, or on camera outside of the Council. Quiet diplomacy is what he said is needed, not unlike what China says it is doing in Darfur.  When Biti said that some countries are "playing ping-pong" with the people of Zimbabwe, it was to China that one correspondents mutterings turned.  Formal Council action on Zimbabwe was blocked. Russia said the matter did not belong in the Council.

            Some wondered how the MDC, a self-described non-state actor,  came to speak on UN Television at the Security Council stakeout. In the past, Western Sahara's Polisario Front, a non-state actor that is party to a Security Council monitored negotiation, had the plug pulled as they spoke at the stakeout. The MDC, some noted, was supported by the United States, which also set up a meeting at its mission for Mr. Biti late on Tuesday. Some UN cynics wondered how helpful it will be, in the long run, to be so closely aligned with the U.S. and the UK. Only time will tell.

Footnote: an Inner City Press present at the UNCTAD meeting in Accra, Ghana recounts that the meeting between the UN's BAN and MDC's leader Morgan Tsvangirai did not look planned in advance. "He just button-holed the S-G," the source marveled. "Then it was claimed as an example of diplomacy." Whatever it takes...

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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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