Inner City Press -- Investigative Journalism from the United Nations

Russia's Vostok Battalion in Lebanon Despite Resolution 1701, Assembly Stays Deadlocked and UNDP Stays Missing

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

UNITED NATIONS, October 19 -- In South Lebanon there are only Lebanese and UN troops, said Major-General Alain Pellegrini, Force Commander of the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) on Thursday. While reporters questioned him about still-alleged weapons smuggling, incursions by Israel and possible anti-aircraft responses by UNIFIL, another question arose. Inner City Press asked, do the soldiers who Russian army engineers brought with them to Lebanon as security comply with Resolution 1701?

No, said Maj.-Gen. Pellegrini, not if they are in South Lebanon.

On October 4, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov announced that "Security will be provided by two protection units... composed of experienced professional soldiers from two battalions, Vostok and Zapad, that belong to the 42nd division in the republic of Chechnya."

The Vostok battalion, beyond being implicated in human rights abuses in the Avar village of Borozdinovskaya, in September 2006 in St. Petersburg operated as a shakedown squad for one party to a dispute about a meat packing plant and the land beneath. Now they are in Lebanon. But where?

S-G & troops in Lebanon

On October 12, Inner City Press had asked Kofi Annan's spokesman, as transcribed by the UN:

Inner City Press question: Russia sent to Lebanon troops it used in Chechnya for something called the (inaudible) Battalion. Various human rights groups have said they are widely accused of human rights abuses and should not be part of the multinational force in Lebanon. I don't know if the United Nations has any comment on that. And also on Anna Politkovskaya's report, which since her assassination has been published and acknowledges torture in Chechnya, whether Louise Arbour [High Commissioner for Human Rights] is going to look at that report or do anything about it.

Spokesman: You have to ask Louise Arbour on the journalist who was killed; I think we already spoke from here. And on the issue of the Russian troops I don't have any specific information, and of course as a matter of rule, we do expect any troops that participate in United Nations operations to uphold the highest standards.
Question: (inaudible).
Spokesman: That is something I would have to talk to Department of Peacekeeping Operations about. But that would be the responsibility of Member States to provide us with that information. [The Spokesman later clarified that Russian troops were not part of the United Nations Peacekeeping Force. Their presence is part of a bilateral agreement between Russia and Lebanon.]

But can, via a bilateral agreement, troops be introduced into South Lebanon? Maj.-Gen. Pellegrini on Thursday said "no." Developing.

Also at Thursday's briefing by Kofi Annan's spokesman, Inner City Press asked if the Secretariat has any response to the Ethiopian Prime Minister's public acknowledgement that there are Ethiopian troops in Somalia. The spokesman repeated a previous, generic call for all parties to respect the UN arms embargo. But while there are certainly other violators, when a head of state says publicly, to his country's parliament, that he is violating a UN arms embargo, shouldn't more than the usual platitudes be deployed?

The UN General Assembly, meanwhile, continued Thursday morning with round after round of voting between Venezuela and Guatemala for a single two-year seat on the Security Council. The results are barely changing, and reporters and diplomats have started asking what the president of the General Assembly will do, or asking what her predecessor Jan Eliason might have done. The current president of the GA left Wednesday afternoon and on Thursday gave a speech in Toronto. In New York, the GA is being portrayed as a "theater of the absurd." In the stakeout area outside the GA, Guatemala's representative said he would prefer a single vote in the morning, and one in the afternoon, and that he'll welcome two days without voting next Monday and Tuesday. He'd previously echoed U.S. Ambassador John Bolton is saying that if Venezuela was "honorable" and followed past practice, Venezuela would drop out, since it is behind 105 to 78.

But at the noon briefing, two other precedents were raised. In 1960, Poland and Turkey resolved a similar stand-off by agreeing to each take one year of the two-year term. And in 2003, Brazil took two years, followed by Argentina for two years. Neither party in these two cases stood down. Whether the vote tally was closer has been asked of the GA President's spokesperson. We'll see.

At Wednesday's noon briefing, Kofi Annan's spokesman called it "unfair" to say that UNDP director Kemal Dervis had dodged the press:

Inner City Press question: About Turkmenistan. There was a conference this week with UNDP and Turkmenistan. UNDP praised the country and its Government. There's an SG report out, on human rights, and the EU has just refused to ratify a trade agreement on human rights grounds and there's a new law prohibiting marriages with foreigners and the killing of journalists. My question is, what is the connection? The SG's report on Turkmenistan, is this communicated to UNDP? How is it decided with agencies engage with�? UNDP on its web site said they advise Turkmenistan Government agencies. If you have something to say, I'd like to hear it, or at long last have UNDP come to this room.

Spokesman: I don't have any of the details of this event involving UNDP and Turkmenistan. I know that you and UNDP have had some issues and you�ve had some trouble talking to them. We will try to negotiate some sort of communication channel between you and UNDP, so you can get your answers to your questions. The reports of the Secretary-General are obviously public documents and, of course, available and known to all agencies and UN country teams. But I don't have the details of this specific event you are talking about.

Inner City Press question: Shashi Tharoor, in this room, said that Kemal Dervis, Head of the UNDP, was going to appear by video, but something happened and he was in Rome. I've never actually seen a UNDP person come and brief anyone here.

Spokesman: That would be unfair, because there have been people here. Mr. Dervis has been here and briefed the press. That is a bit of an unfair assessment.

On Thursday Inner City Press posited that Mr. Dervis has not appeared for a press conference in Secretariat Room 226 since August 2005, fourteen months ago. Giving the questions that are building up, about UNDP's engagement with repressive regimes from Turkmenistan to Zimbabwe to Sudan, isn't it time for Mr. Dervis to take questions? Or for his spokesman William Orme to answer simple written questions in less than two weeks? We'll see.

As Turkmenistan Cracks Down on Journalists, Hospitals and Romance, UNDP Works With the Niyazov Regime

UNITED NATIONS, October 18 -- The European Union reacted to the torture murder of Turkmen journalist Ogulsapar Muradova while in state custody, and other excesses by Turkmenistan�s Saparmurat Niyazov, by declining the invitation to enter a trade agreement with the Central Asian coungtry. The UN Development Program has taken a different approach, and recently offered praise of Niyazov's government.

Today's Turkish Daily News quotes Niyazov that "for some years the state structures and public organizations of Turkmenistan have successfully realized joint programs and projects in collaboration with such organizations as the UNDP, UNICEF, UNESCO and many others."

UNESCO, it should be noted, recently "voiced grave concern at the death of Ogulsapar Muradova in jail in Ashgabat," the capital of Turkmenistan. The UN agency's press release, No. 2006-116, cited Reporters Without Borders that "Ms Muradova's children identified Ms Muradova's body in the morgue of Ashgabat on 14 September. Witnesses are reported to have seen a head wound and many other marks on the rest of her body."

A month after Ms. Muradova's body was identified in the morgue, UNDP's resident coordinator in Turkmenistan Mr. Richard Young told two hundred people at a conference on UN - Government of Turkmenistan cooperation that "as a member of the United Nations, Turkmenistan recognizes the importance of working together to meet concrete targets for advancing development. National ownership is a key to achieving the Millennium Development Goals and adhering to global human rights values." The quote is from a write-up provided by the UN System in Turkmenistan. The write-up contained no criticism of Niyazov or his regime.

It is not clear what "national ownership" the UN's Richard Young was referring to. In recent years, Niyazov has closed all hospitals outside of the capital, telling the BBC, "Why do we need such hospitals? If people are ill, they can come to Ashgabat."

Niyazov, who has called himself Turkmenbashi, Father of All Turkmen, has also closed all libraries, including those in the capital, on the grounds that "nobody reads books or go to libraries".

In fact, the main book taught in schools in Turkmenistan is one written by Niyazov himself, called Ruhknama. Niyavoz has said Ruhknama, sometimes spelled Ruhnama, "was issued to eliminate all shortcomings." It is available in 22 languages on the Turkmenistan government website, here. A UN staffer who has worked for the UN system in Turkmenistan (and who has read Rukhnama) tells Inner City Press that many of the UN offices in Ashkabat use the government's web servers, which block content objectionable to Niyazov and presumably record and register the communications traveling through them. (The UN staff asked not to be named, as for now still a UN employee.)

Like the Karimov government in Uzbekistan, which UNDP also assists in a range of ways from tax collection to help with open source software, Niyazov is cracking down on and thinning the ranks of non-governmental organizations. Reportedly the human rights group Arkadag "has files full of the most diverse explanations they have received about why they are being turned down � a misplaced comma here, a wrongly ordered paragraph there, or a demand for details of all rank-and-file members even though the law stipulates that only the board members need to be named...Re-registration is also a problem for existing NGOs, in the wake of the Law on Public Associations passed in 2003." A more recent law restricts the ability of citizens of Turkmenistan to marry foreigners.

At UN headquarters on Wednesday, Inner City Press asked Kofi Annan's spokesman Stephane Dujarric about these laws, and to explain the contradiction between UNESCO's and even the Secretary-General's own denunciations of the Turkmenistan government's human rights record and UNDP's statement, on its dedicated Turkmenistan website, www.undptkm.org, that "UNDP provides advisory services to selected government agencies in improvement of institutional and legal frameworks for economic and financial management and social protection, statistical capacity development." Video here.

The spokesman has indicated that while this is a good question, it should be answered by UNDP, rather than the Secretariat. The question was asked at noon, but as of six p.m. no response of any kind had been received. We note that UNDP has now delayed two weeks in providing an update on its previously announced de-funding of violent disarmament in the Karamoja region of Eastern Uganda, and has also delayed in responding to Inner City Press' written request for comment on recent testimony to the Fifth Committee on A/61/5 Add.1, on "UNDP's failure to complete monthly bank account reconciliations," "internal control weaknesses present in the implementation process of UNDP's enterprise resource planning (ERP) system" and "the adverse and qualified opinions on project auditors on the implementation of UNDP program expenditures executed by governments."

To be fair to UNDP, here is another UN agency providing unexplained funding to Turkmenistan's government -- UN/DESA Division for Social Policy and Development providing technical cooperation funds to the Niyazov regime. Other supporters include Deutsche Bank, Turkmenbashi's private banker, and the French construction firm Bouygues, to build another palace. Thus is Turkmenbashi provided UN technical assistance to further the Millennium Development Goals. Developing...

At the UN, Darfur Discussed, Annan Eulogized and Oil For Food Confined to a Documentary Footnote

UNITED NATIONS, October 18 -- "On Darfur... it's absolutely no good to say, it's horrible, I can't bear to let this happen. That doesn't get you anywhere." So at the UN Wednesday night said Sir Brian Urquhart, who has known and served all seven of the UN's Secretaries-General.

He continued, speaking on a panel in the UN's Dag Hammarskjold Auditorium, that, "I rather wish that those extremely well-intentioned people who take out full page advertisements in the New York Times and demonstrate in front of the White House and, I expect, in front of here would engage in a discussion of what the point of entry might in actuality be. This is a very hard and difficult problem. As far as I can make out, there is very little leverage over the government of Sudan. And if you don't have permission from the government of Sudan, you won't get the nations who take part in peacekeeping to contribute troops."

Andre Lewin, long-time French diplomat who served as UN spokesman from 1972 to 1976, pointed out that the UN has used the concept of national sovereignty to help "more or less" stop wars between countries. (The less would include the ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan and other clouds on the Security Council's horizon and those ignored, like Somalia and Ethiopia - Eritrea.) But it is the very concept of sovereignty, Amb. Lewin pointed out, that makes stopping the carnage in Darfur difficult for the UN.

A third panelist recounted that "Kofi Annan in 1996 finally convinced the French to stop vetoing him by promising the French the position he had held, head of Peacekeeping. There are reports that the British got similar commitments from the South Korean--"

The moderator Shashi Tharoor quickly said, "I disassociate myself from those remarks," to laugher from the audience. The discussion followed the screening of half-hour documentaries about the tenures of Boutros Boutros-Ghali and Kofi Annan, part of "At the Glass Building: the History of the UN told by its Secretaries-General." Both were laudatory. For example, the Oil for Food scandal was mentioned immediately after Kofi Annan's opposition to the U.S. war on Iraq, implying that the entirety of the scandal was a U.S. retaliation. Thus is the U.N. organization not reformed.

The incoming and eighth Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon was mentioned only oblique in panel discussion. Earlier on Wednesday, rocker Sir Bob Geldof came into Inner City Press' office. Inner City Press asked, "Did you meet with Kofi Annan already?"

"I'll wait until he gets the job. I'm sure he has connections to make," he said. "I want to show Kofi the respect of dealing (mostly) with him, until his last day."

It's nice to be nice, but whether the UN organization is served by such deference is unclear. Among South Korean reporters, who have been in closer touch with Mr. Ban, discussion turned to the identity of the next Deputy Secretary-General. Mr. Ban has reported said it will be a woman from a developing country. One intriguing candidate is Anna Tibaijuka, the head of UN Habitat and of the UN System in Nairobi. Other candidates, some feel, should be named and their merits discussed.

During Wednesday's panel discussion, Inner City Press asked whether the Secretary-General selection process would not have been better served by a debate, or at least question-and-answer in an open (and televised) Security Council meeting. Sir Brian Urquhart said that the work habits of diplomats militates against this. Shashi Tharoor quipped that the Security Council might oppose this because then the presumption would be that they'd select the person who'd answered best.

Inner City Press also asked each panelist about the need for a Freedom of Information Act at the UN. Perhaps under Mr. Ban...

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