From the UN, Silence on War Crimes Enforcement and
Conflicts of Interest on Complaint from Bahrain
Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at
the UN
UNITED NATIONS, November 16 -- "Sometimes you have to
sleep with the Devil if it means getting kids out," UK Ambassador Emyr Jones
Parry told Inner City Press on Thursday, referring to the UN's Jan Egeland
having recently met with Joseph Kony of Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army.
The LRA for twenty years has fought both
the Museveni government and people of northern Uganda. The LRA's leader Joseph
Kony has been quoted: "You report us with your mouth, and we cut off your lips.
Who is to blame? It is you! The Bible says that if you hand, eye or mouth is at
fault, it should be cut off."
On July 8, 2005, the UN's International
Criminal Court issued a sealed indictment of Joseph Kony, his deputy Vincent
Otti and three others. The indictments were supposed to remain confidential
until the five men were apprehended. In late September 2005, however, the head
of the UN's Department of Political Affairs, Ibrahim Gambari, let slip that the
five were indicted. Subsequently the ICC confirmed it.
More than a year later, none of the five
has been arrested. Last week the UN's head of humanitarian affairs, Jan Egeland,
announced he would meet with Joseph Kony if, in advance of the meeting, the LRA
released some of the children they have abducted. Although no release was made,
Egeland met with Kony, and emerged to request that Museveni pull his troops
further back from the LRA camps. There are peace talks going on, in which Kony
and Otti are demanding that the ICC indictments be dropped.
Thursday the UN Security Council met on
the LRA. On the way in, U.S. Ambassador John Bolton stopped to talk with
reporters. He did not, however, make any mention of Uganda. Peruvian Ambassador
Voto-Bernales came out to the microphone and read a statement, about Haiti.
Inner City Press asked Amb.
Voto-Bernales about
Haiti,
whether the Council would send the reinforcement that UN envoy Edmond Mulet has
requested, and about the LRA -- are the indictments being discussed? On Haiti,
Amb. Voto-Bernales said that other than the death of two UN peacekeepers from
Jordan, the news on Haiti is "good." Video
here.
On the LRA, he said that a Presidential Statement was being finalized in the
chamber, and he said he would come out to the microphone after the meeting. The
Statement does not mention the ICC, or the indictments.
After the meeting, and with Council
President Voto-Bernales nowhere to be found, Inner City Press asked UK
Ambassador Emyr Jones Perry if the Presidential Statement the Council issued
meant that the ICC indictments are on hold. "Not at all," Amb. Jones Parry
answered.
But what about the UN's Jan Egeland
meeting with Joseph Kony?
Amb. Jones Parry said that the meeting
was held to get children released. "Sometimes you have to sleep with the Devil
if it means getting kids out," Ambassador Jones Parry said.
In
Uganda, carrying a heavy load
Inner City Press then asked, "Do you
think Jan Egeland will stay in the UN system?"
"I'm sure he won't," said Ambassador
Jones Parry.
There have been rumors of the UN setting
up a mediation unit, to be based in Norway, which Jan Egeland would head up, and
that would be funded by Norway. Others say that the idea is now being scrapped.
Others say that Egeland's visit to Kony -- which some called "Jesse
Jackson-like" -- was something of a try out for high profile mediation. If so,
more doubts have been raised than questions answered. No prisoners were
released, and Kony was given a platform upon which to deny having kidnapped
children. Impunity? Time will tell.
Inner City Press ran from the
Q&A with Amb. Jones Parry to ask Kofi Annan's spokesman a question. Opposition
groups in Bahrain have asked Mr. Annan to investigate
reports that
the government of Bahrain's ruling al-Kalifa family has been "secretly planning
to manipulate the demographic makeup of the country, through the selective
granting of citizenship... under the guise of creating a Shiite-Sunni balance in
the country but would in fact weaken the Shiite population, 70 per cent of
Bahrainis." Another
report notes
that "Bahrain will hold parliamentary elections Nov. 25. The elections could
trigger a fresh wave of unrest, pitting the ruling Sunni al-Khalifa family
against the country's Shiite majority.
The spokesman said he will
look into the letter and Mr. Annan's response. Video
here,
from Minute 18. Inner City Press then asked the spokeswoman for Sheikha Haya
Rashed Al Khalifa, the General Assembly president and a member of Bahrain's
al-Khalifa family, to get a comment. Video here, from Minute 25:13. The
spokesman said that she didn't think there would be any comment, in the capacity
of GA President. How about in another capacity? We'll see. One of the issues
here is of structural conflict, wherein a UN Secretary-General is asked to
investigate the family of the GA President, with whom the Secretary-General must
work. Some have suggested that the GA President might publicly say something
like, "Mr. Secretary-General, I will not be offended if you grant the request to
investigate my family. In fact, it is better than you grant the request, to
remove any appearance of conflict of interest." Other have suggested that the
Secretary-General might recuse himself from the request. With USG
Chris Burnham gone,
who will provide guidance? Developing.
Feedback: editorial
[at] innercitypress.com
UN Office: S-453A,
UN, NY 10017 USA Tel: 212-963-1439
Reporter's mobile: 718-716-3540
Nagorno-Karabakh President Disputes Fires and
Numbers, Oil and UN, in Exclusive Interview with Inner City Press - Video
here
Byline: Matthew Russell Lee, Correspondent at the UN
UNITED NATIONS, November 13 -- Of the so-called
frozen conflicts in the world, the one in the Nagorno-Karabakh region in
Azerbaijan, claimed by Armenia, heated up this Fall -- literally.
In August and September 2006, Azerbaijan
and Armenia traded volleys of draft resolutions in the UN General Assembly,
about a series of fires in the Nagorno-Karabakh region which on most maps is
Azerbaijan, but is not under Azeri control.
The subtext of the fight was
that Azerbaijan wants the dispute to be addressed in the
UN General Assembly,
while Armenia prefers the ten-year process before the Organization for Security
and Cooperation in Europe, the OSCE. In the UN General Assembly these frozen
conflicts are often treated as footnotes, particularly to a
press
corps which covers the Security Council in the most minute detail, at the
expense of most other activities undertaken by the world body.
Last week Inner City Press sat down for
an interview with the president of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, Arkady
Ghoukasyan, and asked him about the fires, about the UN and other matters. Click
here
for the video.
"The fires were provoked by Azerbaijan
firing," Mr. Ghoukasyan said. "They used special bullets that would ignite wheat
fields."
In the UN, "the countries of the Islamic
Conference are present and Azerbaijan is hoping to use their support," said Mr.
Ghoukasyan. He added that most countries in the UN know little of the Karabakh
conflict, so "Azerbaijan can try propaganda in the United Nations," in a way
that it can't with the OSCE "experts."
By contrast, the situation in
Abkhazia is routinely put on the UN Security Council agenda by Russia, with
representative of Georgia often excluded from the meetings and resorting to
sparsely-attended press conferences outside, most recently on
October 12.
President,
flag & correspondent
On Nagorno-Karabakh, UN observers see
Turkey backing Azerbaijan, while the NKR is represented, if one can call it
that, by Armenia. The interview, originally scheduled for a hotel across from UN
Headquarters, was moved six blocks south to the Armenian mission in a brownstone
on 36th Street, to a second-story room with the Nagorno-Karabakh flag on the
table. Through a translator, Mr. Ghoukasyan argued that no negotiations that do
not involve representatives of Nagorno-Karabakh can solve the problem. "The
prospects are diminishing, without Nagorno-Karabakh involvement, it's just
impossible to come to a resolution," he said.
Hot Words From Frozen Conflicts
Inner City Press asked Mr. Ghoukasyan to
compare Nagorno-Karabakh to certain other so-called frozen conflicts, two of
which are before the OSCE: Transnistria a/k/a Transdnestr, and South Ossetia,
where a referendum was held on November 12, the results of which no country in
the world recognized.
"We already had our referendum,"
Mr. Ghoukasyan said, "back in 1991. We would only hold another one if Azerbaijan
and the co-chairs of the OSCE group agreed in advance to recognize its results."
Mr. Ghoukasyan said he had come to the
U.S. less to build political support or to propose a referendum than to raise
funds for infrastructure projects in Nagorno-Karabakh, mostly from "different
circles of Armenians in the United States." He is on a whirlwind tour: "Detroit
Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and maybe Fresno, we are still finalizing
our West Coast program," he said. A highlight will be a telethon from Los
Angeles on November 23.
Speaking of funds, and of infrastructure,
Inner City Press asked about the impact of the Baku - Tbilisi - Ceyhan (BTC) oil
pipeline on the conflict.
"Azerbaijan is trying to get maximum
political dividends from fact of this pipeline," said Mr. Ghoukasyan. "Since the
West is interested in undisruptible oil, Azerbaijan tries to beef up their price
for this stability. This emboldens Azerbaijan, making it more aggressive and
less willing to come to agreement."
What would an agreement look like?
"In any resolution, we think that
Karabakh should have physical land connection with Armenia," said Mr. Ghoukasyan.
At a press conference about
the BTC pipeline earlier this year, the
Azeri Ambassador told Inner City Press that
twenty percent of Azerbaijan's territory has been occupied by Armenia.
On the disputed numbers of displaced
people, Mr. Ghoukasyan quipped, "I always suspected they are bad in
mathematics." He estimated it, "maximally," to be 13%, and put the number of
displaced Azeris at "only" 650,000, rather than the one million figure used by
Azerbaijan. Mr. Ghoukasyan admonished, "There is information in books."
And so to the library went Inner City
Press. Therein it is recounted that while "in 1989, the Armenian Supreme Council
made Nagorno-Karabakh a part of Armenia, this decision was effectively annulled
by NKR declaring its independence in 1991. Whether the decision to declare
independence was made cooperatively with Yerevan is not yet known."
The UN's role is dismissed: "with one
exception the UN never condemned the capture of Lachin, the strategic link
between Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh. The UN passed Security Council Resolutions
822, 853, 874 and 884... Each UN resolution reiterated the international body's
support for the OSCE Minsk Group process."
Going back, some pundits blame the
conflict on Stalin: "he took a part of Armenia and gave it to Azerbaijan, and
now so many people are dying while trying to correct his foolish mistake. Now
redefining the borders is as painful as cutting someone's flesh when that person
is alive."
Fast forward to 1977, when the
Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast's first secretary from 1973 to 1988, Boris
Kevorkov, told visiting journalists that Karabakh Armenians were happily
separated from the Armenian republic, saying that "the history of Nagorny
(Mountainous) Karabakh is closely interwoven with Azerbaijan's... By contrast,
the region is close to Armenia geographically but is separated by high
mountains, which were an insuperable barrier in the past for any extensive
contacts." (Quoted in Claire Mouradian's "The Mountainouse Karabagh Question").
Also found are rebuttals, including from
Azeri poet Bakhtiyar Vahadzade in his 1988 Open Letter, that "since 1828, our
people have been divided into two parts," and that both Azeris and Karabakh
Armenians "emanate from the same ethnic stock: the Caucasian Albanians." Others
say Turkey always takes the Azeri side. There are references to the shoot-down
of an Iranian C-130 aircraft in 1994 as it crossed the Azeri-Karabakh line on
contact, and of Iran's demand for an apology.
Going back, a volume by Mazda Publishers
in Costa Mesa, California entitled "Two Chronicles on The History of Karabakh,"
contains the full texts of Tarikh-e Karabakh (History of Karabakh) by Mirza
Jamal Javanshir and of Karabakh-name by Mariza Adigozal Beg. In the
introduction, translator-from-Persian George A. Bournoutian reports that
"Armenian historians maintain that all of Karabakh was, at one time, part of the
Armenian kingdom and that the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh has had an
Armenian majority for several hundred years. Azeri historians assert that the
region was never part of Armenia and that the Armenian population arrived there
from Persia and the Ottoman empire after the Treaty of Turkmenchay (1828) when,
thanks to the Russian policy that favored Christians over Muslims, the Armenians
established a majority in what became Nagorno-Karabakh." In a footnote he
addresses nomenclature: "Nagorno-Karabakh is the Russian designation. The
Armenians call is [sic] Artsakh or Gharabagh and the Azeris Karabag."
Finally, on the question of numbers, Arif
Yunosov in "The Migration Situation in CIS Countries" opines that the conflict
has caused 353,000 Armenia refugees and 750,000 Azeris -- less than the one
million figure used by Azeri President Aliev, but large, and 100,000 larger than
acknowledged in the interview. And a more solid figure than Aliev's 20%, but
more than was acknowledged, is 13.62 percent. The search for truth continues. If
the comparison is to the original, Soviet-defined Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous
Oblast, it must be noted that NKR is claiming, beyond the Oblast, the territory
of Shahumian.
By the end of the interview, Mr.
Ghoukasyan was focusing on two regions of the old Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous
Oblast over which now Azerbaijan has de facto control: Martakert and Martuni.
While Mr. Ghoukasyan's point was that these should be subtracted from the 13
percent, they raise a larger question, that of break-aways from break-aways.
The analogy, to Inner City
Press, is to the serially-opening or
"nesting" Russian dolls.
Inside one republic is another, but inside the breakaway is another smaller
portion, that either wants to remain with the larger, or to itself be
independent. Northern Kosovo comes to mind, and the portion of Abkhazia into
which a
Tbilisi-based government is trying to
relocate.
How small can these Russian dolls become?
And how will the UN-debated status of Kosovo, now frozen into 2007, impact or
defrost other frozen conflicts? Developing.
Other Inner City Press
reports are archived on
www.InnerCityPress.org -
Congo Shootout
Triggers Kofi Annan Call, While Agent Orange Protest Yields Email from
Old London
On the UN -
Corporate Beat, Dow Chemical Luncheon Chickens Come Home to Roost
UN Bets the
House on Lebanon, While Willfully Blind in Somalia and Pinned Down in
Kinshasa
Stop Bank
Branch Closings and Monopolies in the Katrina Zone, Group Says,
Challenging Regions- AmSouth Merger
Ship-Breakers
Missed by UN's Budget for Travel and Consultants in Bangladesh, Largest
UNIFIL Troop Donor
Sudan Cites
Hezbollah, While UN Dances Around Issues of Consent and Sex Abuse in the
Congo, Passing the UNIFIL Hat
With Somalia on
the Brink of Horn-Wide War, UN Avoids Question of Ethiopian Invasion
In UN's Lebanon
Frenzy, Darfur Is Ignored As Are the Disabled, "If You Crave UNIFIL,
Can't You Make Do With MONUC?"
UN Decries
Uzbekistan's Use of Torture, While Helping It To Tax and Rule; Updates
on UNIFIL and UNMIS Off-Message
At the UN,
Lebanon Resolution Passes with Loophole, Amb. Gillerman Says It Has All
Been Defensive
On Lebanon,
Russian Gambit Focuses Franco-American Minds, Short Term Resolution Goes
Blue Amid Flashes of Lightening
Africa Can Solve
Its Own Problems, Ghanaian Minister Tells Inner City Press, On LRA Peace
Talks and Kofi Annan's Views
At the UN, Jay-Z
Floats Past Questions on Water Privatization and Sweatshops, Q'Orianka
Kilcher in the Basement
In the UN
Security Council, Speeches and Stasis as Haiti is Forgotten, for a
Shebaa Farms Solution?
UN Silence on
Congo Election and Uranium, Until It's To Iran or After a Ceasefire, and
Council Rift on Kony
At the UN Some
Middle Eastern Answers, Updates on Congo and Nepal While Silence on
Somalia
On Lebanon,
Franco-American Resolution Reviewed at UN in Weekend Security Council
Meeting
UN Knew of Child
Soldier Use by Two Warlords Whose Entry into Congo Army the UN
Facilitated
Impunity's in
the Air, at the UN in Kinshasa and NY, for Kony and Karim and MONUC for
Kazana
UN Still Silent
on Somalia, Despite Reported Invasion, In Lead-Up to More Congo Spin
UN's Guehenno
Says Congo Warlord Just Needs Training, and Kazana Probe Continues
With Congo
Elections Approaching, UN Issues Hasty Self-Exoneration as Annan Is
Distracted
In DR Congo, UN
Applauds Entry into Army of Child-Soldier Commander Along with Kidnapper
Spinning the
Congo, UN Admits Hostage Deal with Warlord That Put Him in Congolese
Army
At the UN, Dow
Chemical's Invited In, While Teaming Up With Microsoft is Defended
Kofi Annan
Questioned about Congolese Colonel Who Kidnapped Seven UN Soldiers
At the UN,
Speeches While Gaza Stays Lightless and Insurance Not Yet Paid
At the UN
Poorest Nations Discussed, Disgust at DRC Short Shrift, Future UN
Justice?
At the UN
Wordsmiths Are At Work on Zimbabwe, Kony, Ivory Coast and Iran
UN Silent As
Congolese Kidnapper of UN Peacekeepers Is Made An Army Colonel: News
Analysis
At
the UN, New Phrase Passes Resolution called Gangster-Like by North Korea; UK
Deputy on the Law(less)
UN's Guehenno
Speaks of "Political Overstretch" Undermining Peacekeeping in Lower
Profile Zones
In Gaza Power
Station, the Role of Enron and the U.S. Government's OPIC Revealed by UN
Sources
At UN, North
Korean Knot Attacked With Fifty Year Old Precedent, Game Continues Into
Weekend
UN's Corporate
Partnerships Will Be Reviewed, While New Teaming Up with Microsoft, and
UNDP Continues
Gaza Resolution
Vetoed by U.S., While North Korea Faces Veto and Chechnya Unread
BTC Briefing,
Like Pipeline, Skirts Troublespots, Azeri Revelations
Conflicts of
Interest in UNHCR Program with SocGen and Pictet Reveal Reform Rifts
At the UN, A Day
of Resolutions on Gaza, North Korea and Iran, Georgia as Side Dish
UN Grapples with
Somalia, While UNDP Funds Mugabe's Human Rights Unit, Without
Explanation
In North Korean
War of Words, Abuses in Uganda and Impunity Go Largely Ignored
On North Korea,
Blue Words Move to a Saturday Showdown, UNDP Uzbek Stonewall
As the World
Turns in Uganda and Korea, the UN Speaks only on Gaza, from Geneva
North Korea in
the UN: Large Arms Supplant the Small, and Confusion on Uganda
UN Gives Mugabe
Time with His Friendly Mediator, Refugees Abandoned
At the UN,
Friday Night's Alright for Fighting; Annan Meets Mugabe
UN Acknowledges
Abuse in Uganda, But What Did Donors Know and When? Kazakh Questions
In Uganda, UNDP
to Make Belated Announcement of Program Halt, But Questions Remain (and
see
The New Vision,
offsite).
Disarmament
Abuse in Uganda Leads UN Agency to Suspend Its Work and Spending
Disarmament
Abuse in Uganda Blamed on UNDP, Still Silent on Finance
Alleged Abuse in
Disarmament in Uganda Known by UNDP, But Dollar Figures Still Not Given:
What Did UN Know and When?
Strong Arm on
Small Arms: Rift Within UN About Uganda's Involuntary Disarmament of
Karamojong Villages
UN in Denial on
Sudan, While Boldly Predicting the Future of Kosovo/a
UN's Selective
Vision on Somalia and Wishful Thinking on Uighurs
UN Habitat
Predicts The World Is a Ghetto, But Will Finance Be Addressed at
Vancouver World Urban Forum?
At the UN, a
Commando Unit to Quickly Stop Genocide is Proposed, by Diplomatic Sir
Brian Urquhart
UN's Annan
Concerned About Use of Terror's T-Word to Repress, Wants
Freedom of Information
UN Waffles on
Human Rights in Central Asia and China; ICC on Kony and a Hero from
Algiers
At the UN,
Internal Justice Needs Reform, While in Timor Leste, Has Evidence Gone
Missing?
UN & US,
Transparency for Finance But Not Foreign Affairs: Somalia, Sovereignty
and Senator Tom Coburn
In Bolton's Wake,
Silence and Speech at the UN, Congo and Kony, Let the Games Begin
Pro-Poor Talk and
a Critique of the World Trade Organization from a WTO Founder: In UN
Lull, Ugandan Fog and Montenegrin Mufti
Human Rights
Forgotten in UN's War of Words, Bolton versus Mark Malloch Brown: News
Analysis
In Praise of
Migration, UN Misses the Net and Bangalore While Going Soft on Financial
Exclusion
UN Sees Somalia
Through a Glass, Darkly, While Chomsky Speaks on Corporations and
Everything But Congo
AIDS Ends at the
UN? Side Deals on Patents, Side Notes on Japanese Corporations,
Salvadoran and Violence in Burundi
On AIDS at the
UN, Who Speaks and Who Remains Unseen
Corporate Spin on
AIDS, Holbrooke's Kudos to Montenegro and its Independence (May 31, 2006)
Kinshasa Election
Nightmares, from Ituri to Kasai. Au Revoir Allan Rock; the UN's
Belly-Dancing
Working with
Warlords, Insulated by Latrines: Somalia and Pakistan Addressed at the
UN
The Silence of
the Congo and Naomi Watts; Between Bolivia and the World Bank
Human Rights
Council Has Its Own Hanging Chads; Cocky U.S. State Department Spins
from SUVs
Child Labor and
Cargill and Nestle; Iran, Darfur and WHO's on First with Bird Flu
Press Freedom?
Editor Arrested by Congo-Brazzaville, As It Presides Over Security
Council
The
Place of the Cost-Cut UN in Europe's Torn-Up Heart;
Deafness to Consumers, Even by the Greens
Background Checks
at the UN, But Not the Global Compact; Teaching Statistics from
Turkmenbashi's Single Book
Ripped Off Worse
in the Big Apple, by Citigroup and Chase: High Cost Mortgages Spread in
Outer Boroughs in 2005, Study Finds
Burundi: Chaos at
Camp for Congolese Refugees, Silence from UNHCR, While Reform's Debated
by Forty Until 4 AM
In Liberia, From
Nightmare to Challenge; Lack of Generosity to Egeland's CERF, Which
China's Asked About
The Chadian
Mirage: Beyond French Bombs, Is Exxon In the Cast? Asylum and the
Uzbeks, Shadows of Stories to Come
Through the UN's
One-Way Mirror, Sustainable Development To Be Discussed by Corporations,
Even Nuclear Areva
Racial
Disparities Grew Worse in 2005 at Citigroup, HSBC and Other Large Banks
Mine Your Own
Business: Explosive Remnants of War and the Great Powers, Amid the
Paparazzi
Human Rights Are
Lost in the Mail: DR Congo Got the Letter, But the Process is Still
Murky
Iraq's Oil to be
Metered by Shell, While Basrah Project Remains Less than Clear
At the UN, Dues
Threats and Presidents-Elect, Unanswered Greek Mission Questions
Kofi, Kony,
Kagame and Coltan: This Moment in the Congo and Kampala
As Operation
Swarmer Begins, UN's Qazi Denies It's Civil War and Has No Answers if
Iraq's Oil is Being Metered
Cash Crop: In
Nepal, Bhutanese Refugees Prohibited from Income Generation Even in
their Camps
The Shorted and
Shorting in Humanitarian Aid: From Davos to Darfur, the Numbers Don't
Add Up
UN Reform:
Transparency Later, Not Now -- At Least Not for AXA - WFP Insurance
Contract
In Congolese
Chaos, Shots Fired at U.N. Helicopter Gunship
In the Sudanese
Crisis, Oil Revenue Goes Missing, UN Says
Empty Words on
Money Laundering and Narcotics, from the UN and Georgia
What is the Sound
of Eleven Uzbeks Disappearing? A Lack of Seats in Tashkent, a Turf War
at UN
Kosovo: Of
Collective Punishment and Electricity; Lights Out on Privatization of
Ferronikeli Mines
Abkhazia:
Cleansing and (Money) Laundering, Says Georgia
Post-Tsunami
Human Rights Abuses, including by UNDP in the Maldives
Who Pays for the
Global Bird Flu Fight? Not the Corporations, So Far - UN
Citigroup
Dissembles at United Nations Environmental Conference
Other Inner City Press
reports are archived on
www.InnerCityPress.org -
For reporting about banks, predatory
lending, consumer protection, money laundering, mergers or the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), click
here for Inner
City Press's
weekly CRA Report.
Inner City Press also reports weekly concerning the
Federal Reserve,
environmental justice,
global inner cities, and more recently
on the United
Nations, where Inner City Press
is accredited media. Follow those links
for more of Inner City Press's reporting, or, click
here
for five ways to
contact us,
with or for more information.
Copyright 2005-2006 Inner City Press, Inc. To request
reprint or other permission, e-contact Editors [at] innercitypress.com - phone: (718) 716-3540
