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With Sri Lankan Safe Zone in Flames, UN Fiddles, War Crimes Charged

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

UNITED NATIONS, May 15 – As the Sri Lankan government says it will overrun the so-called Safe Zone in 48 hours, at the UN in New York Secretary General Ban Ki-moon met with China's deputy foreign minister, and then attended a Republic of Korea-sponsored Buddhist event with, among others, Myanmar's representative. At the UN's noon briefing, Inner City Press asked about Ban's schedule, and for confirmation that he got to know Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapaksa while he was a South Korean diplomat, and has privately described Rajapaksa in glowing terms. Video here, from Minute 14:26.



  “I don't know about that,” Ban's spokesperson Michele Montas said. “I can try to find out.” As deadline six hours later, no information had been provided.

    In the face of the Rajapaksa administration's final solution, Ban sent his chief of staff Vijay Nambiar, for the second time, rather than going himself. Nambiar's first trip was followed by accelerating civilian death. As Inner City Press reported at the time, his brother Satish served as a consultant to the Sri Lankan government, and went on to write an op-ed piece praising the government's deadly military campaign in the North and the general who led it. Click here to view Satish Nambiar's resume on the UN web site.

  The UN has not answered on any of these issues, other than pointing out, on May 14, that Vijay Nambiar is not Sri Lankan.

    Inner City Press asked if the World Food Program supplies which the UN on Wednesday said was going to be delivered to the conflict zone had in fact arrived. No, spokeswoman Michele Montas said, what WFP is doing is delivering food to the refugees and IDPs. As we will report on in more detail in the near future, the UN in Sri Lankan has a track record of delivering its aid only when and where the government says to, with the effect of ethnic cleansing.

Ambulance aflame in "No Fire" Zone, May 13, 2009

   It is on that note, complicity in war crimes, that we are reduced to ending this dispatch. Ban Ki-moon this week got a message, cc-ed to Inner City Press, which ended: see you at the International Criminal Court. There is talk of an investigation of the UN's refugee agency, for conspiring with the government to set up housing only where the government wanted to move the Tamils. Eventually, with or without effect, accountability will be apportioned. But right now in Sri Lanka it is a crisis. We close with this message, from the conflict zone:

13 May 2009

Dear Sir / Madam,

Heavy battle started since 5.30 am. Many wounded civilians were brought to hospital and hospital is not providing services because hospital was under shell attack. Few staff reported duty. nearly thousand patients are waiting to get daily treatment. But even simple wound dressing and giving antibiotics problems. So many wounded have to die. In the ward among patients many death bodies are there.

Looking hospital seen and hearing the civilians cry really disaster. Did they make any mistake do the world by the innocent. But the important sta[keholders] are just listening the situation and not helping the people.

Dr.T.Sathiyamoorthy

Regional director of Health Services

Kilinochchi (Now at No Fire Zone)

  From the UN's May 14 transcript:

Deputy Spokesperson Okabe:  ...the very fact that he’s sending his Chef de Cabinet again to underscore his message I think speaks loudly on what the Secretary-General in his personal capacity is trying to do to bring an end to the situation on the ground.

Inner City Press: A follow-up on the Chef de Cabinet.  There has been substantial criticism, not just that because Mr. Nambiar comes from India, but because his brother, an Indian General [Satish] Nambiar recently wrote an op-ed praising the offensive of the Sri Lankan Army in the north and General [Sarath] Fonseca who’s led it.  Is the Secretariat aware of this criticism and how does it address it?  Also, that Mr. Nambiar went before he got a commitment to visit an open conflict zone and it never took place.  What’s the, I guess, the response and why isn’t Ban Ki-moon himself going if he’s invited and the French and others have said he should go ASAP?

Deputy Spokesperson Okabe:  Matthew, as you know the Secretary-General’s position on going to Sri Lanka has been reiterated from this podium many times this week.  And the fact that Mr. Nambiar happens to be of a nationality does not in any way get in the way of his work as a UN official.  As you know, everybody from the UN does come from one country or another; but once they sign on to work at the UN they go as UN officials.

Inner City Press: Isn’t there generally a sort of an unwritten rule of not, for example, I mean, when Mr. Gambari was going to do Nigeria, are you unaware that they see that... within diplomats in the UN often say that a person from a country too close to a conflict is not the right person to be sent.

Deputy Spokesperson Okabe:  Mr. Nambiar is not from Sri Lanka.

  No, he's from India which has a major stake in the Sri Lanka conflict. Watch this site.

 On Thursday May 7, Inner City Press asked Associate UUN Spokesperson Farhan Haq:

Inner City Press: I wanted to ask about this invitation that’s been made to the Secretary-General to visit Sri Lanka. First I wanted to ask if on Monday when he met with the Ambassador of Japan, whether he was briefed on a visit by Mr. [Yasushi] Akashi to Sri Lanka and was urged by Japan that he should take this visit. And I also wanted to know whether he would be in New York 11 May for the Middle East debate, and 15 May to meet with the Chinese diplomats, that in fact this is one reason that he is considering not going, as I have been told by senior Secretariat staff.

Associate Spokesperson Haq: Well, first of all, we don’t announce the trips of the Secretary-General until they are close to occurring. And in that regard, I don’t have anything to announce about a trip to Sri Lanka at this stage. At the same time, as Michèle told you yesterday, and is still true for today, if the Secretary-General believes that visiting Sri Lanka can have an impact in terms of saving lives there, he will certainly try to go. So he is considering that. But part of what he is studying is what the impact of a potential trip would be.

Inner City Press: But if he had that belief, that would be without regard to attending the 11 May Middle East thing or the 15 May meeting with the Chinese diplomats? I am told that’s a major factor in his planning.

Associate Spokesperson: Scheduling is a separate issue. What we’re talking about is the decision of whether or not to go. And certainly if he can make a difference and can save civilian lives, which is what his priority has been on this case, then he will go. At present, we don’t have anything to announce at all in this regard, though.

Question: Just one last one on that. I wanted to know, can you at least confirm that he met with Ambassador Takasu on Monday in his office inside the Security Council? Can you give a read-out of that meeting and say why it wasn’t on his public schedule?

Associate Spokesperson: I can confirm that he met with the Permanent Representative of Japan. He did that, yes. It was in his office in the Security Council. We don’t provide readouts of meetings with ambassadors.

Question: And why wasn’t it on the schedule?

Associate Spokesperson: It came up all of a sudden when he had a bit of free time in between other appointments on a fairly hectic day.

  While Ban Ki-moon is working on his issues as a trip to Manama, Bahrain, after a news-less trip to Malta, the killing of civilians accelerates in Sri Lanka. On Friday May 8, Inner City Press asked Deputy Spokesperson Okabe:

Inner City Press: On the invitation by the Government of Sri Lanka to the Secretary-General to visit, is there any progress in thinking? In the alternative, is the Secretary-General, is he considering invoking Article 99 or responsibility to protect or making some other move of some type on the situation in Sri Lanka?

Deputy Spokesperson: I have nothing beyond what we’ve been saying from this podium this week on Sri Lanka, including what the Secretary-General himself has said earlier this week.

   What Ban said did not involve calling for a cease-fire, did not respond to the invitation to visit Sri Lanka, or the accelerating rate of civilians death over the weekend, during which no statement issued about Sri Lanka. Watch this site.

 Channel 4 in the UK with allegations of rape and disappearance

  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' Feb 26 UN debate

Click here for Inner City Press' review-of-2008 UN Top Ten debate

Click here from Inner City Press' December 12 debate on UN double standards

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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