As
UN Budget Committee Moves to Trim Missions, Croatian Ambassador Under
Fire
Byline:
Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at the UN: News Analysis
UNITED
NATIONS, June 22 -- The UN's Budget Committee, already weeks overdue
in appropriating funds to the UN peacekeeping missions, has arrived
at a formulaic cut of half a percent in each mission.
The European
Union, US, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Japan and South Korea had
demanded a 2.5% cut in operating budgets. But in the final deal
emerging, there is an increase for the Chad and Central African
Republic mission, MINURCAT, and lesser cuts for others.
The Haiti
Mission (MINUSTAH) for example faces a cut of $6.5 million out of
$600 million, according to diplomats involved - a bit more than one
percent.
Meanwhile
in other money news around the UN, Croatia's
Permanent Representative in New York Neven Jurica
is under fire for
financial irregularities. With funds allegedly misappropriated in New
York, the Croatian foreign ministry is looking back into Jurica's
previous tenure running his country's mission in Washington.
UN's Ban with Croatia's President Mesic and,
on shoulder, "Perm" Rep Jurica
An
inquiry with the Mission in New York yielded that
Hi
Matthew, Ambassador Ranko Vilovic, the Deputy Permanent
Representative, is charge'd affaires a.i. of the Permanent Mission of
Croatia to the UN. Any questions pertaining to Ambassador Jurica's
status need to be directed towards Mr. Mario Dragun, Spokesperson of
the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and European Integration.
We
hope to have more on this. For now, on and from DPKO, this:
Subj:
regarding your question yesterday on a proposal in the Fifth
Committee to cut the UN peacekeeping budget
From:
DPKO Spokesperson's Office
To:
Inner City Press
Sent:
6/11/2009 12:15:18 P.M. Eastern Standard Time
You
had asked at the Noon Briefing yesterday about the proposal to cut
the UN peacekeeping budget... As the discussions on the UN
peacekeeping budget are ongoing, it would be inappropriate to comment
on a matter that's still being discussed by Member States and on
which no decision has been made. From a broader perspective - I
think you're already aware, so do forgive me if I state the obvious -
our peacekeeping operations do need to be fully financed if they are
to be able to carry out the mandates set for them by the Security
Council.
And even then...
* * *
UN's $8.2 Billion
Peace Budget Faces 2.5% Cut, S. Korea Puts Congo
Drones on Block?
Byline:
Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at the UN: News Analysis
UNITED
NATIONS, June 8 -- Anyone can call for peace, but who will pay for
it? That question was being debate, or at least discussed, in the
basement of the UN past 10 p.m. on Monday night. The UN's Fifth
(Budget) Committee had passed its end of May deadline and still the
$8.2 billion peacekeeeping budget was in dispute.
The U.S, Japan,
European Union and surprise Westerner South Korea are proposing a 2.5
percent across the board reduction in all peacekeeping missions'
budgets. The phrase, taken from the Western Sahara draft of June 6, was
a decision "to reduce the Mission's overall operational costs by a
further 2.5 per cent to be accommodated through efficiency savings."
The Group of 77 and China are resisting.
Take
for example
the UN Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, known by its
French acronym MONUC. The Advisory Committee on Administrative and
Budgetary Questions' "recommendations on the financing of MONUC
would entail an overall reduction of $66,818,200 or some 4.7 percent
of the Mission's overall budget," mostly due to the local
elections MONUC will support being put back into 2010.
The
African Group,
on the other hand, "is concerned that the cuts proposed by the
ACABQ could negatively impact on the effective functioning of the
Mission."
These
quotes are
from public speeches. Consider, however, the confidential
presentation of the Secretariat to ACABQ, the slide script of which
Inner City Press has been given by a well-placed source. The
Secretariat argued that "the budget before you is not a
maintenance budget based on routine operations." Instead the
Secretariat proposed "an increase of $235 million compare to
2008/09... 168 new posts and positions directly related to the surge
in troops."
This
"surge"
is the 3,000 additional personnel called for the Security Council
during the CNDP fighting in the Kivus, before the house arrest and
Nkunda and incorporation
of indicted war criminal Jean-Bosco
Ntanganda into the Congolese Army, where he has worked in connection
with UN-supported operations according to Congolese records. While
troubling, this should at least save money, no? No. The Secretariat
still proposed ever-increased spending.
The
surge will
come, the document says, from "troops from Bangladesh, Egypt and
Jordan... The new Egyptian battalion will be deployed to South Kivu
and the Bangladeshi will be deployed to Ituri... while the Jordan
Special Forces company will be positioned in North Kivu."
Interestingly, the budget includes "$18 million additional
requirements for 2 UAVs" -- unmanned aerial vehicles, the drones
MONUC chief Alan Doss requested at the turn of the year.
UN's Ban and Doss (not
Mountain) in DRC, budget cuts not shown
Several
Fifth
Committee sources emphasized to Inner City Press the news value of
South Korea's position. Here you have Ban Ki-moon, one source spun,
putting his name on proposals to increase peacekeeping budgets by
almost five percent, while his home country South Korea has joined
the push to instead cut the budgets by 2.5 percent.
The
source asked,
"who's kidding who?" All we could say is "whom."
(On this front it must be said that the Secretariat's presentation to
ACABQ has some laughable typos. It refers for example to "the
Pakistanese battalion." But we digress.)
Upstairs
in the
Delegates' Lounge, a proponent of the Haiti mission's budget told
Inner City Press that MINUSTAH, as it's known, spends 100% or more of
its budget. Mission head Hedi Annabi is called Napoleonic. Other
missions, in their start up phase or even earlier, like Somalia,
might face even steeper cuts.
During
all of this,
the chief of the Department of Peacekeeping Operations Alain Le
Roy
is slated to travel from June 9 to 23 to West Africa. He will stop
first in Nigeria, where 27 peacekeepers have been sentence to jail
for life for protesting not being paid after a UN mission. Another
peacekeeper, female, says she was pressured for sex while on mission.
As a now-dead rapper sang, More money, more problems.
Le
Roy will head
to Cote d'Ivoire, where Laurent Gbagbo keeps putting off the promised
election. When will the mission draw down? The force in Liberia,
too, is called larger than needs be. In the basement, however, it is
a question of whose ox is gored. Watch this site.
* * *
At
UN, Near Final Draft on North Korea Leaked to Inner City
Press, Arms Export Ban and Cargo Inspection Added
Byline:
Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press: Exclusive-Must Credit
UNITED
NATIONS, June 5 -- Thirteen days after North Korea conducted an
underground nuclear test, a near-final
draft resolution emerged
behind closed doors at the UN Security Council.
The six-page
draft, a copy of which Inner City Press obtained and puts
online here as a must-credit exclusive, has more than thirty
operative paragraphs, compared to the mere 14 paragraphs of the three-page
draft Inner City Press similarly obtained and published on
May 28. (AP, Japanese and other media appropriately credited Inner
City Press).
This time, Inner City Press is
told by its sources that the draft was circulated to the capitals of
the Permanent Five Plus Two -- these last are Japan and South Korea
-- with the deadline for comments on June 5 at 10 a.m. New York
Time.
The provision allowing North Korea to import light weapons, in
Paragraph 10, is attributable to Russia, according to a well placed
Inner City Press source who calls it the Kalishnikof or AK-47 clause.
Beyond the cargo ban, other provisions are weaker than
the proponents wanted. Paragraph
19, for example, merely calls
on "member states and international
financial and credit institutions not to enter into new
commitments... except for humanitarian and developmental purposes."
Paragraph 17 prohibits "bunkering services, such as provision of
fuel or supplies" to vessels. Paragraph 22 calls for reports
within 45 days.
At UN, media chases news of draft now published by Inner City Press
While
the draft resolution seems unlikely to change North Korea's course,
it has been the subject of intense journalistic interest for nearly
two weeks now at the UN in New York, particularly by Japanese media,
who have remained camped out in front of the Security Council during
meetings on Somalia, Bosnia and Tribunals and on June 5, Sudan and
Sri Lanka.
Non-permanent members of the Security Council complained to the Press
that they were kept in the dark throughout the days of negotiation.
On
the morning of June 5, Inner City Press obtained the draft
resolution
that, as a must-credit exclusive, it puts online here. Watch this
site.
* * *
Sri
Lanka Denies IDP Reduction Reported by Inner City Press, Raises to
UN
Byline:
Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at the UN: News Analysis
UNITED
NATIONS, June 5 -- The Sri Lankan government has denounced a story
about "missing" internally displaced people which Inner
City Press, based on discrepancies in UN documents and statements
from UN sources, published this week.
Beyond denying that any IDPs
have been removed from the UN-funded camps in Vavuniya, which Inner
City Press visited on May 23, the government has said
that it is
raising the matter with the UN. "Minister of Human Rights and
Disaster Management, Mahinda Samarasinghe is expected to take up the
issue with United Nations," according to a pro-government web
site.
On
June 2, Ban Ki-moon's Spokesperson publicly denounced Inner City Press
for its reporting, but denied
she had discussed "complaining to Google
News" about it, presumably to stop its distribution or censor it.
The next
day she recanted, click here. Click here
for Inner City Press (on NYTimes.com) on tensions in Sri Lanka.
Inner
City Press' story noted that even the UN, in a May 30 report,
acknowledged that its number of IDPs in the camps decreased by over
13,000.
While the public report by UN OCHA ascribed this sudden drop
-- from May 27 -- to "double counting," local UN sources,
on condition of anonymity due to fear of retaliation not only by the
Sri Lankan government but also by the UN, told Inner City Press that
as with the satellite photos of the conflict zone and casualty
figures, some in the UN were seeking to downplay this potentially
troubling information.
In Vavuniya IDP camp, UN's Ban on government's banner
OCHA's
May 30 report states that "276,785 persons crossed to the
Government controlled areas from the conflict zone. This represents a
decrease of 13,130 IDPs since the last report (Sitrep No.18) on 27
May 2009. The decrease is associated with double counting. Additional
verification is required."
But earlier,
OCHA had praised the "improved, systematic registration
being undertaken in the camps."
The
article
continued that UN
sources in Colombo tell Inner City Press that senior UN officials
above them, Sri Lankan nationals who are Sinhalese, are downplaying
the 13,000 "missing" IDPs, which would otherwise be of much
concern given the reports of disappearances from the camps, the
seizing of teenage males for detention and females for other
purposes, as UK Channel 4 asserted with on camera interviews
Shouldn't the UN look into this more closely, given
multiple and credible reports of people being "disappeared"
from the UN-funded IDP camps? The UN so far has done nothing in this
regard.
To expedite matters, one hopes, Inner City Press now
publishes a list of some of the places where the UN -- or perhaps a
less compromised body -- should look for missing people:
Pallekelle
near Kandy; Ambepussa, Boosa and, it is said, the Army training camp
at Diya-talawwa.
On June 2, Ban Ki-moon's Spokesperson while again publicly denouncing
Inner City Press for its reporting, denied
she had discussed "complaining to Google News" about it, presumably to
stop its distribution or censor it.
The next day, Ms. Montas
confirmed
that both legal action and "complaining to Google News" were
discussed at a meeting she had with four top UN officials,
including
Mr Ban's speech writer, who also traveled to Sri Lanka on May 23, the
UN's top lawyer Patricia O'Brien, Angela Kane and the head of UN
"Public Information," Kiyotaka Akasaka, previously of the
Japanese foreign ministry.
Following a failure by these officials to respond to requests that they
explain how the strategy they discussed comports with the free press
Article 19 of the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Inner City
Press has asked for action from UN High Commissioner for Human
Rights Navi Pillay, click here.
Footnotes:
During this week's back and forth about the UN threatening legal
action against the Press, and to complain to Google News about Inner
City Press' coverage, a high UN official, again anonymous due to
fear of retaliation even at his level, approached Inner City Press to
say that the attempt at censorship or expulsion was being pushed by
what he diplomatically called "a member state." Asked if
this meant Sri Lanka, he nodded.
Meanwhile,
in a show of retaliation, the UN has taken the step of seizing and
checking the UN e-mail of staff members who they believe have been
sources for Inner City Press. Some say that when the UN went to Sri
Lanka, rather than seek to hold the government to a high standard of
human rights, the effect was to make the UN
(even) more like the
administration of the Rajapaksas...
Guard
in Manik Farm camp, (c) M. Lee May 23, 2009
The
article below quoting that "Minister of Human Rights and
Disaster Management, Mahinda Samarasinghe is expected to take up the
issue with United Nations" takes issue with Inner City Press
quoting that
"UN
sources in Colombo tell Inner City Press that senior UN officials
above them, Sri Lankan nationals who are Sinhalese, are downplaying
the 13,000 "missing" IDPs, which would otherwise be of much
concern given the reports of disappearances from the camps, the
seizing of teenage males for detention and females for other
purposes, [as] UK Channel 4 asserted with on camera interviews."
Contrary
to the (intentional?) misinterpretation below, Inner City Press was
not saying that all Sri Lankan nationals are Sinhalese -- rather,
that within the UN's staff in Sri Lanka, those who are of the
majority Sinhalese group are seen by their Tamil colleagues as in
some cases using their positions in the UN to advance, as some phrase
it, "the Sinhalese Buddhist nationalist cause." Inner City
Press did not invent these divisions, and the article's and
minister's statement that all is now well in Sri Lanka is, at best,
wishful thinking. Within the UN, some recall the way in Rwanda a Hutu
staff member named Callixte Mbarushimana was allowed to use his UN
position and materiel to further the Hutu extremist cause which has
since been acknowledged as genocide. The UN continued employing and
paying Callixte Mbarushimana for many years. Some wonder, will that
happen with the UN in Sri Lanka?
On
June 5 outside the UN Security Council, Inner City Press asked the
Special Adviser of the Secretary General on the Prevention of
Genocide, Francis Deng, if his Office will do any work on Sri Lanka.
"We try to follow what is going on, the post-conflict
developments," he said. "It's been going on for twenty five
years, you don't just...." His voice trailed off. "One
phase ended, presumably, but....". And his voice trailed off
again. Of course, it's been "going on" for far longer than
25 years.
The
article:
Sri
Lanka rejects ICP report on IDP disappearance
Fri,
2009-06-05 18:06
By
our Colombo Correspondent
Colombo,
05 June, (Asiantribune.com): The Sri Lankan government today totally
rejected a claim in a Inner City Press (ICP) quoted by a pro LTTE
website, that 13,000 people from Internally Displaced camps have
disappeared, and described it as a malicious attempt to discredit the
Colombo government.
Highly
placed government sources said that the Tamil Diaspora overseas
working for the LTTE were now engaged in a disinformation campaign to
discredit the Government unable to bear the crushing defeat of the
LTTE and its' terrorism.
Rehabilitation
Ministry sources expressed anger and surprise over the pro-LTTE
canard that is being spread through internet websites misquoting
figures of the number of displaced persons.
They
said the ICP report was aimed at creating a rift between communities
now living peacefully as one people of one country." That is why
they have quoted Sinhalese as Sri Lankan nationals knowing well that
Sri Lanka is a multi-ethnic country", they added.
Explaining
further about the contents of the ICP report quoted by a pro-LTTE
website, a ministry source said that if Sri Lanka nationals were only
Sinhalese as claimed, there could be no Tamil displaced persons in
the country.
Meanwhile,
the Minister of Human Rights and Disaster Management,Mahinda
Samarasinghe is expected to take up the issue with United Nations as
the ICP report from the pro-LTTE website had quoted unnamed UN
sources in Colombo to claim such disappearance of a large number of
displaced persons, which, the Sri Lankan government has totally
rejected.
Watch
this site.
, 
