The UN and Nagorno-Karabakh: Flurries of Activity Leave Frozen Conflicts Unchanged; Updates on Gaza, Gavels and Gbagbo

Byline: Matthew Russell Lee at the UN

  UNITED NATIONS, September 7 -- The UN General Assembly met past 6 p.m. Thursday to approve by consensus a resolution entitled "The situation in the occupied territories"... of Azerbaijan. Armenia disassociated itself from the consensus, expressing its displeasure at the title and at the notion of its dispute with Azerbaijan being considered in the UN. Other self-declared stakeholders in this frozen conflict by proxy spoke before the resolution passed. The United States, which considers itself an interested party with respect to every disagreement and territory, spoke in favor of the resolution. So did Ukraine, on behalf of "the GUAM states" -- Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Moldova. Turkey spoke in favor, as did Pakistan on behalf of the Organization of the Islamic Conference.

            All this diplomatic firepower was brought to bear on a final resolution consisting of five paragraphs, primarily directing the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe to assess fires in the affected territories, to involve the UN Environment Program in rehabilitation and to report back to the UN General Assembly by April 30, 2007.

Still waiting, per WFP

            What were the two days of negotiations about? asked an observer in the General Assembly's cheap seats, where few of the headphones are working.

            Armenia does not want to the issue before the UN, and objects to the phrase "occupied territories of Azerbaijan" when referring to Nagorno-Karabakh and environs.

            If the UN is involved in the Palestinian occupied territories, about which an UN agency gave a briefing on Thursday, and in similar issues in Abkhazia, why has it not been involved in Nagorno - Karabakh? What is the UN's involvement in Nagorno - Karabakh?

            The UN Security Council passed four resolutions on Nagorno - Karabakh between April and November of 1993. Resolution 822 called for a cessation of hostilities. Resolutions 853, 874 and 884 continued in that vein. The ceasefire, such as it was and is, was negotiated by Russia in May 1994. Since then the main venue of action, or inaction, has been the 11-nation Minsk Group of the OSCE, with Russia, France and the U.S. as co-chairs. Since all three are members of the UN Security Council's Permanent Five, with veto rights, one might wonder why they prefer this other venue. To assess UN involvement in the territories in 2006, Inner City Press on Wednesday asked the UN Spokesman's Office. The oral answer was that even the UN Development Program has no operations in Nagorno - Karabakh, only the World Food Program. Then on Thursday the following was provided:

The Joint UNEP / OCHA Environment Unit has been working in close collaboration with colleagues in UNEP, who have been in direct contact with representatives from Azerbaijan and Armenia and the OSCE, which sent a mission to the region in July of this year. The Joint Unit, through our relationship with the Global Fire Monitoring Centre, which is our partner on forest fire-related matters, identified experts last month who could, potentially, go on an assessment mission. The OSCE has been requested to undertake another mission and is considering it. It sought UNEP's advice on experts, which in turn contacted the Joint Unit. We have, therefore, brokered a relationship between the Global Fire Monitoring Centre and the OSCE. So our identified experts are speaking with staff from OSCE. The Joint Unit will continue to support all those involved in this issue.

            There are areas in the world which the UN does not impact via Security Council resolutions, but in which it is a major humanitarian player. Nagorno-Karabakh, like for another example Casamance in Senegal, is not one of those regions. It is sometimes said that if you live in a region in the clutches of one of the Permanent Five members of the Security Council, you're out of luck at the UN. But the list of those out of luck at the UN is longer than that. And Nagorno - Karabakh... is on that list.

            In the General Assembly chamber, the scaffolding is now done, so the meeting was held there. The first part of the meeting, headlined by Jan Eliasson and Mark Malloch Brown, concerned conflict prevention. Sitting in the lower audience seats, few of the headphones worked or provided sound. Sitting behind the S's, one could see that among those nations not attending the GA session on conflict prevention was... Sierra Leone, regarding which Secretary-General Kofi Annan recently issued a report, S/2006/695, stating in part that "the continued border dispute between Sierra Leone and Guinea remains a source of serious concern." While the report does not name it, the dispute surrounds the diamond-rich town of Yenga. As usual, follow the money.

            Regarding another, higher profile occupied territory, Thursday at noon the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) briefing on Gaza revealed among other things that while the U.S. Overseas Private Investment Corporation says it will pay on its insurance policy on the Gaza power station, rebuilding will take 18 months and power is for now sporadic.

            At UN Spokesman Stephane Dujarric's noon briefing, Inner City Press asked three questions, one of which, concerning housing subsidies by governments to UN employees, was summarily preempted with the statement that an answer will come in the near future. On Cote D'Ivoire, where a toxic dumping has resulted in the disbanding of the cabinet, the UN Spokesman responded that the Ivorian prime minister called the UN's head of peacekeeping and, as usually, everyone should stay calm. The benefits of this chaos to still-in-power Laurent Gbagbo are apparent to some. On whether the UN's envoy on extra-judicial killings will as requested visit Nigeria as well as Lebanon, a response one supposes will come.

  Mr. Dujarric's sometimes-fellow briefer at noon, Pragati Pascale, gave a preview of the afternoon's General Assembly action including on Nagorno - Karabakh, then fielded following her statement about a gavel passing, fielded a strange but concrete question about whether it was the same unique gavel, with wood looking like flame, used when the budget cap was lifted. Even before 5 p.m. she responded: " President Eliasson will, indeed, pass the fancy ceremonial gavel to the incoming President.  This was a gift to the General Assembly from Iceland.  President Eliasson did receive a copy of the gavel from the Secretary-General at the end of the main part of  the session last December, so he can take that home as a remembrance of his time here." Speak, memory! So to their detriment say those of Karabakh...

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At the UN, Micro-States Simmer Under the Assembly's Surface, While Incoming Council President Dodges Most Questions

Byline: Matthew Russell Lee at the UN

   UNITED NATIONS, September 5 -- Nagorno Karabakh, one of the world most frozen and forgotten conflicts, surfaced at the UN on Tuesday, if only for ten minutes. The General Assembly was scheduled to vote on a resolution concerning fires in the occupied territories of Azerbaijan. The diplomats assembled, or began to assemble, at 4 p.m.. At 4:15 it was announced that in light of ongoing negotiations, the meeting was cancelled, perhaps to reconvene Wednesday at 11:30.

            Sources close to the negotiations told Inner City Press that the rub is paragraph 4 of the draft resolution, which requests that the Secretary-General report to the UN General Assembly on the conflict. Armenia wants the matter to remain before the Minsk Group of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which has presided over the problem for more than a decade. Leading the OSCE's Minsk Group are Russia, France and the United States, members of the veto-wielding Permanent Five on the UN Security Council, nations which Azerbaijan claims have ignored its sovereignty as well as blocking Security Council action, as for example Russia has on Chechnya.

            Of the fires, Azerbaijan has characterized them as Armenian arson, and has asked for international pressure to allow it to reach the disputed territories where the fires have been.

Nagorno-Karabakh, per WFP

            At a July 13, 2006 briefing on the BTC pipeline, Inner City Press asked the Ambassador of Azerbaijan Yashar Aliyev about the pipeline's avoidance of Armenia. We cannot deal with them until they stop occupying our territory, Ambassador Aliyev said. "You mean Nagorno - Karabakh?" Not only that, Amb. Aliyev answered. That's only four percent. Few people know this, but Armenia has occupied twenty percent of our territory.

            Both Amenia's Foreign Minister Vartan Oskanian and UN Ambassador Armen Martirosian have said publicly in the past month that if Azerbaijan continues pushing the issue before the United Nations, the existing peace talks will stop. Armenian sources privately speak more darkly of an alliance of Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Moldova, collectively intent on involving the UN in reigning in their breakaway regions including South Ossetia, Nagorno-Karabakh and Transdniestria -- examples of what some call the micro-states. Armenia is concerned that in the UN as opposed to OSCE, Azerbaijan might be able to rally Islamic nations to its side.

            It is not only to predominantly Muslim nations that the Azeri's are reaching out. The nation's foreign minister Elmar Mammadyarov met recently with this Swedish counterpart Jan Eliasson, the outgoing president of the General Assembly.

            Following Tuesday's General Assembly postponement, Inner City Press asked Mr. Eliasson if, in light of his involvement in reaching the 1994 cease-fire, he thinks the GA might have more luck solving the Nagorno-Karabakh than the OSCE has.

            "I hope so," he said. "I'm in favor of an active General Assembly." He recounted his shuttle diplomacy to Baku in the early 90s. And then he was gone.

            Elsewhere in the UN at Tuesday, the income president of the Security Council, Greek Ambassador Adamantios Vassilakis held a press conference on the Council's plan of work for September. Inner City Press asked when the Council will get the long-awaited briefing on violations of the arms embargo on Somalia. Amb. Vassilakis responded about a meeting on September 25, at Kenya's request, on the idea of the IGAD force in Somalia. Inner City Press asked what has happened with the resolution on the Lord's Resistance Army of which the UK has spoken so much. It will be up to them to introduce the motion," Amb. Vassilakis replied. He did not reply on the issue of the outstanding International Criminal Court indictments against LRA leaders including Joseph Kony and Vincent Otti.

            Inner City Press asked why, on Ivory Coast, the long-delayed report by the Secretary-General's expert on the prevention of genocide has not been released. In this response, Amb. Vassilakis grew animated, saying that one has to choose between justice and peace.  This implies that the finished report identifies alleged perpetrators, as pertains to genocide, but is being withheld either to facilitate peace, which has not come, or as negotiating leverage over some of the perpetrators. To be continued, throughout the month.

Rare UN Sunshine From If Not In Chad While Blind on Somalia and Zimbabwe, UNDP With Shell in its Ear on Nigeria

BYLINE: Matthew Russell Lee at the UN

  UNITED NATIONS, August 29 -- In Chad there are ninety political parties and over seventy rebel groups, with a focus on overthrowing Idriss Deby. Meanwhile Deby last Friday ordered Chevron and Petronas out of the country, for failure to pay taxes.

  Chad is the fifth poorest country in the world, with countries in turmoil or trouble along at least half of its perimeter. To the west, Niger and to the east, on the other side of camps housing over 200,000 refugees from Darfur, lies Sudan. To the south, the Central African Republic with its own rebel groups. In  the tri-border area of the Sudan, Chad and the CAR is a lawless zone of mercenaries for hire, and area none of the three governments control.

            Tuesday the head of the UN's operations in Chad, Kingsley Amaning, provided reporters a lengthy and well-received briefing. He began by sketching how the situation in Darfur is further destabilizing Chad, spreading ethnic conflict and banditry across borders. Mr. Amaning said that alongside 90 political parties, the roster of rebel groups has grown from 47 to 72. Inner City Press asked, as even invited political parties have, why the rebels are excluded from Deby's new national dialogue. There are a dozen refugee camps in eastern Chad, each with fifteen to twenty thousand residents, in a region where the average town size is only three thousand. In fact, Mr. Amaning said, right now "the quality of life of the refugees is higher than the quality of life of the local population."

            Mr. Amaning, originally from Ghana and having previously served the UN in Guinea, has been in Chad for a year and a half. During that time, rebels marching on the capital N'djamena were stopped only by a bomb dropped by the French air force. A colleague of Mr. Amaning, OCHA Chad desk officer Aurelien Buffler, noted in an interview that the official description of the French bomb was a "warming shot." He added that Chad is not even on the agenda of the Security Council and that raising funds for development is difficult, since donors don't know where the money goes. Later this week 25 donors led by Canada will meet with Mr. Amaning in UN Headquarters. The dichotomy seems to be that while emergency humanitarian funds can be raised, long-term funds for development are more difficult. Mr. Amaning said, "Humanitarians get resources, but we don't follow up political solutions with development so that people have jobs."

Refugees in Chad per UNHCR

            Inner City Press interviewed Mr. Amaning after the briefing, and asked him first about specific vulnerable refugee camps near the border with Darfur, Am Nabak and Ouve Casson. Mr. Amaning confirmed that these camps will be moved, belated, to a lot north of Biltine, now that it's thought there is underground water on the government-owned site.

            Turning to history, the UN Security Council, history and one of its veto-wielding Permanent Five, Inner City Press asked about France's involvement. Mr. Amaning said that the UN principles are to oppose violent takeovers and to encourage dialogue. "I tell the French Ambassador that instead of trying to explain what type of intervention that was," Mr. Amaning said, referring to France's bomb-drop in support of Idriss Deby, "they should say they did it on behalf of the international community, so there would be no violent overthrow."

            Speaking more generally, or regionally, Mr. Amaning said, "If we do not stabilize Darfur," weapons will continue to spread throughout the region. "It's a line that's going to join up... from DRC through Central Africa to the northern part of Uganda, to Chad and the Sudan -- where are we going?"  At least Mr. Amaning is asking.

            For weeks Inner City Press has asked all and sundry in UN Headquarters to confirm or deny that Ethiopian troops are present in Somalia. Kofi Annan's representative for Somalia, Francois Lonseny Fall, skirted the issue despite six questions from Inner City Press last time he was in New York. Mr. Fall's spokesman has told Inner City Press to look elsewhere, since his office does not have a monitoring mandate in Somalia.  In a stakeout interview, the head of the UN's Department of Political Affairs Ibrahim Gambari responded with generalities. An email followed, that DPA relies for information on Mr. Fall's office -- which has not monitoring mandate.

            Kofi Annan's spokesman's office suggested that Inner City Press contact the members of the group monitoring the UN's Somalia arms embargo. Group member Joel Salek confirmed receipt of Inner City Press' request, but said he would "give floor to Bruno [Schiemsky], the Chairman of our Group, to answer your questions." Time passed, Inner City Press sent a second request. Mr. Schiemsky responded, "Sorry, at this stage I have no comments. I need first to brief the Sanctions Committee" of the Security Council.

            Tuesday at the Security Council stakeout, Inner City Press asked UK Ambassador Emyr Jones Parry who in the UN can speak regarding Somalia. Amb. Jones Parry responded that the UK is working on a resolution. Video here.

   But when Inner City Press five minutes later asked the President of the Council, Ghana's Nana Effah-Apenteng, about Amb. Jones Parry's resolution, the Ghanaian Ambassador said no resolution has been introduced.  Video here. Meanwhile the Horn of Africa slides toward regional war.

            Earlier this year at the African Union summit in Banjul, Kofi Annal pulled back from involvement in Zimbabwe, saying he was deferring to the new mediator Ben Mkapa. Now documents from the AU submit show that Mkapa never accepted the role of mediator. Tuesday Inner City Press asked Kofi Annan's spokesman if this now means that the Secretary-General will re-engage. Video here, at Minute 21:50. The spokesman said he will respond; this has not taken place by 6 p.m. deadline.

            Nor as the spokesman answered Inner City Press' question of Monday, about why UNDP took funding from Shell Petroleum to write a report on human development in the Niger Delta, where Shell has a long record of violating human rights. I will get you an answer, the spokesman said. We're still waiting...

At the UN, from Casamance to Transdniestria, Kosovans to Lezgines, Micro-States as Powerful's Playthings

Byline: Matthew Russell Lee at the UN

UNITED NATIONS, August 25 -- Because they are so often forgotten, today's report is micro-states. The thread ran through UN Headquarters on Friday, from noon briefing to stakeout to UNCA Club upstairs. Kofi Annan's spokesman on his way to the podium stopped to tell Inner City Press not to ask certain questions. Some involved the housing subsidy story below, one involved the Casamance region of Senegal, where fighting is raging and refugees flee. 

   Thursday Inner City Press had asked who in the UN, other than the refugee agency UNHCR, was addressing Casamance. Friday the spokesman whispered, "On Casamance I don't have anything more than when UNHCR has said." So instead Inner City Press asked about a seminal micro-state, Kosovo. At a press conference hours earlier in Pristina, the UN's mediator Martii Ahtisaari had announced that no package will be put before the Security Council in September. Inner City Press asked, but what of the postponed municipal elections? Video here, at Minute 29.

            The spokesman's office arranged a conference call to UNMIK in Pristina, where the acting press chief said no elections can be held in the winter anyway. The OSCE, he said, estimates that to schedule elections takes at least six months. So much for local democracy, even in areas run by the UN.  Kofi Annan's incoming envoy to Kosovo should have a better answer. We'll see. Other data the spokesman belated provided on Friday is being analyzed.

            The micro-states theory is that if Kosovo becomes fully independent, the same will happen -- or be called for by Russia -- in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, in Transdniestria and even Ajara in Georgia. From this list we can drill down even keeper. Inner City Press asked Kazakh Ambassador Yerzhan Kazykhanov about a civil disturbance earlier in the week in Aktau on the Caspian coast, involving attacks on immigrants from the striving micro-state of Chechnya, on Azeris and the little-known Lezgines, who come from Dagestan.

   "There are many groups," the Kazakh Ambassador said, adding that his recent flight from Almaty to Aqtobe took nearly four hours. On the map he pointed at Oral and noted that World War II passed through. In his prepared remarks, Kazakhstan's Ambassador stressed, not without reason, that the "closure of the Semipalatinsk testing site was one of the most significant events in the field of nuclear disarmament." Asked about Kazakhstan's joint anti-terror operations with China in Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, like Chechnya another potential micro-state blocked by one of the Permanent Five on the UN Security Council, the Kazakh Ambassador assured that the fighting of terror has nothing to do with refugees. We'll see.

Slovakian limbo per UNHCR

            But back to the micro-state of Casamance, which was part of what's now Guinea-Bissau until France took it. The civil strife dates back at least to 1982, and yet the UN and Security Council do nothing about it. At a stakeout interview on Friday afternoon, Inner City Press asked the Council's president Nana Effah-Apenteng if Casamance is on his radar.  No, the Ghanaian Ambassador replied. "Maybe you are more up-to-date on this issue than I am." Video here, at Minute 8:47.  A well placed source upstairs at the UN noted that Senegal keeps it quiet. As Chechnya is to Russia, in a sense, Casamance is to Senegal. Ah, the micro-states...

At deadline in Conference Room 3 in the basement, the disability rights convention was being endlessly discussed. Ten days ago the chairman of the Ad Hoc Committee on the Convention, Don MacKay, said that if current efforts to block the creation of a treaty monitoring body are successful, the Convention may well not be enacted. "And that would be shabby treatment," Mr. MacKay said, citing a long history of societies' discrimination against the disabled.

 Click here for video and here for the text of the draft Convention.

            Inner City Press asked if the United States is among the countries opposing any monitoring of countries' performance under the Convention, similar to the approach the U.S. took in derailing the Small Arms meeting at the UN earlier this year. Mr. MacKay acknowledged that the U.S. is among six or seven countries raising such concerns, but stated that the U.S. position does not seem "doctrinal" or doctrinaire.

    The afternoon the conference would wrap up, the UN briefer Thomas Schindlmayr resisted naming the countries opposed for example to the reference to countries' occupation. One journalist loudly left the room. Later this list became clear, including the U.S., Australia, Israel. And at 7:52 p.m., amid applause, the report was adopted.

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