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

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, September 24 -- After Ecuador's Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino met with UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, he came down and held a press conference. He ran though issues from the litigation against Chevron for polluting Lagio Agrio, in the context of previous UN work on transnational corporations, to the asylum case of Julian Assange.

Inner City Press, after thanking Patino on behalf for the Free UN Coalition for Access for holding a briefing right after meeting Ban, proceeded to ask Patino what issues he raised to Ban, and what Ban said.

Patino said he had raised transnational corporation, and that Ban had “taken note” of what he said about Assange's case, for which Patino criticized both the UK and Sweden while saying he'd like to meet with the UK's new Foreign Secretary, most probably in London.

But when, later during Patino's press conference, Ban Ki-moon's spokesperson's office sent out the UN's read-out of the meeting it mentioned climate change and Ebola, but not a word about corporations or Assange or Wikileaks.

To some, this is like when Ban went to Nicaragua and Daniel Ortega spoke at length about Gaza but Ban's spokesperson's office did not mention Gaza in the read-out. Is it that Ban doesn't hear what he doesn't want to hear? Or that his spokesperson's office leaves out what Ban doesn't want known?

Inner City Press also asked Patino about Ecuador opening embassies in Algeria, Angola and Nigeria. He confirmed it, and said there is a need for better relations between blocs or regional groups, Latin America and Africa. We'll have more on this.