Inner City Press: Investigative Reporting from the United Nations

At UN, As Blair Meets Ban, Echoes of Gaddafi & JPMorgan Chase, Amos

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, March 3 -- When Tony Blair came to the UN Thursday at 6:30 pm to meet with Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, the first UN official he greets was former UK minister Valerie Amos. Then Ban and his two closest advisers, Kim Won-soo and Vijay Nambiar, came in, followed by the head of the UN Departmen tof Political Affairs bureau on the Middle East.

While Ban made small talk about Amos going on Friday to Tunisia, presumably to the Libyan border -- “Saturday,” she replied -- Blair's UN role is as representative of the Quartet on development, focused on the Occupied Palestinian Territories. So what was the agenda?

Blair and Amos, no fly zone over Libya not shown (c) MRLee

Blair, in fact, had led the rapprochement with Gaddafi, now much under fire in the UK. So some wonder who or what he was lobbying for at the UN. Gaddafi's government has written to Ban to oust Ambassadors Shalgam and Dabbashi for speaking out against him. Which side of that would we find Tony Blair?

He has been dismissive of disclosing his outside business activities and how they might be conflicts of interest.

Kim, Nambiar, Ban, Amos, Horst, across from Blair (c) MRLee

For example, Blair works for JPMorgan Chase, which has said it will close countries' Missions to the UN's bank accounts at the end of March. The UN Secretariat has said it was trying to take action on this -- would Ban raise it to Blair? Watch thi site.

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At UN, Portugal Will Chair Libya Sanctions Committee, Hopes To Never Staff It

By Matthew Russell Lee, Exclusive

UNITED NATIONS, March 3 -- Portugal will chair the Libya Sanctions Committee of the UN Security Council, Inner City Press is informed. The formal decision will come on Tuesday, March 8.

The hope, the source said, is that “it will be a short term committee” and that “the need for sanctions will disappear.”

Inner City Press had earlier heard, from a UN sanctions source, that the Libya Sanctions Committee would not even be staffed.

The source said that it take one or two months to appoint a group of experts, and the hope is that by that time, there will be no need: that is, Gadhafi will be gone.

Portugal's Perm Rep meets Ban, staffing of Libya Sanctions committee not shown

For now, the process is for the decision to be formalized at the Council's next session on March 8. Then the chair, Portugal's Permanent Representative to the UN Jose Filipe Mendes Moraes Cabral, will consult with other Council members and draft a letter to all member states about their Libya sanctions obligations.

The process of appointing experts will begin, but they are hoping it will never be completed. We'll see.

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At UN, Libyan Dabbashi Predicts Inaction by UN on Gadhafi's Ouster Letter, Visa & Shalgam Questions

By Matthew Russell Lee, Exclusive

UNITED NATIONS, March 3 -- Hours after the UN confirmed receiving a letter from the Gadhafi government to withdraw the credentials of Ambassadors Ibrahim Dabbashi and Shalgam, Inner City Press asked Dabbashi what he thought the UN would do.

“Nothing,” Dabbashi said. “The regime is already illegitimate.”

But while a senior UN official on Wednesday night told Inner City Press about the letter and the possibility of referring it to the UN Office of Legal Affairs for a long consideration, others say it is an open and shut case. Gadhafi is still viewed the UN as the head of state, and his government gets to choose who represents him at the UN.

“Even though we'd have to hold our nose,” a well placed Secretariat official told Inner City Press, “the principle is bigger than this one case.”

The principle is that each country has one recognized head of state -- even if like Alassane Ouattara in Cote d'Ivoire they control only a single hotel -- and that person chooses their representatives.

Dabbashi at UN microphone, Gadhafi's letter not shown

Others have guessed that the United States could try to deny visas for any new diplomats whom Gadhafi might send. But under the US' Host Country Agreement with the United Nations, the US has to allow in people accredited to the UN.

At most the US can impose resistrictions on them such as not being able to travel more than 25 miles from Columbus Circle, or not being able to visit Ground Zero.

So despite Dabbashi's statement, it seems clear that through time, if Gadhafi is not ousted, Shalgam and Dabbashi will be, from the UN. The US, one assumes, won't revoke their visas and make them go back to a Gadhafi-fun Libya....

At Thursday's noon briefing, Inner City Press asked UN Spokesman Martin Nesirky to confirm receipt of Gadhafi's letter. Nesirky confirmed it and said it is being studied. He said he didn't know the date on the letter, since he hadn't actually seen the letter.

Footnote: Shalgam is being sought to explain his role in a deal struck between Italy, Gadhafi and Saddan Hussein, under which Saddam would have been given asylum in Libya. Shalgam is head to have cut the deal in Rome. Then, the US is said to have intervened with Gadhafi to stop it. Might this give Shalgam some leverage? Might he want to talk about it more at this time? Watch this site.

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In Libya, 70,000 from Bangladesh Trapped, Gadhafi Asks for UN Seats Back

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, March 2 -- The fighting in Libya resonates through the UN in New York, not only in the Security Council and General Assembly but in talks between Missions and UN agencies and even at receptions.

Bangladesh's Permanent Representative Abulkalam Abdul Momen told Inner City Press on Wednesday night that his country has 70,000 citizens still in Libya, and doesn't have the resources to get them out.

He said the the UN refugee agency UNHCR told him they can do little more than ask Egypt and Tunisia to let people in.

Looking ahead, he said that if Saudi Arabia faces protests, it will be much worse for Bangladesh, which has 2.7 million of its national working in Saudi Arabia. In Libya, the Bangladesh embassy has only three Bengladeshi staff members. The local hires, Momen said, don't come in to work anymore.

Along with Momen, Inner City Press went to speak the Belgium's Permanent Representative Jan Grauls. His country had only 70 of its national in Libya. Fifteen of them, he said, were dual Libyan citizens who decided to stay. The rest have been evacuated.

“They have the money to do that,” Momen whispered.

Told that Gadhafi's government has written to the UN to strip the credentials of Ambassadors Shalgam and Dabbashi, who both denounced the Colonel, Grauls mused that this raised interesting legal issue since Gaddafi, or at least Libya, has now been referred to the International Criminal Court.

Momen & Ban, assistance to Bangladesh's trapped in Libya not shown

But Sudan's Omar al Bashir has been indicted for genocide by the ICC, but still names his ambassadors to the UN. Will the UN now have to disbar Shalgam and Dabbashi, whose speeches have been called so courageous and moving? Watch this site.

Footnote: On another matter Bangladesh's Permanent Representative Abulkalam Abdul Momen bemoaned to Inner City Press the international community's interference in venerating and defending the Grameen Bank's Muhammad Yunus, who he said evaded taxes and is past retirement age.

“But we're not supposed to do anything, because it has important friends,” Momen said, wondering whatever happened to the call for the rule of law. What about the high interest rates?

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In UN Libya Resolution, US Insistence on ICC Exclusion Shields Mercenaries from Algeria, Ethiopia

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, February 26 -- After passage of a compromise Libya resolution by the UN Security Council on Saturday night, Inner City Press asked French Permanent Representative Gerard Araud if mercenaries aren't let off the hook by the sixth operative paragraph, exempting personnel from states not members of the International Criminal Court from ICC prosecution.

Araud regretted the paragraph, but said the the United States had demanded it. He said, “No, that's, that was for one country, it was absolutely necessary for one country to have that considering its parliamentary constraints, and this country we are in. It was a red line for the United States. It was a deal-breaker, and that's the reason we accepted this text to have the unanimity of the Council.”

While a Bush administration Ambassador to the UN in 2002 threatened to veto a UN resolution on Bosnia if it did not contain a similar exclusion, the Obama administration has maintained this insistence on impunity, which in this case applies to mercenaries from Algeria, Tunisia and Ethiopia, among other mercenary countries.

(In the case of Algeria, there are allegations of official support for Gadhafi).

While Inner City Press was able to ask UK Ambassador Mark Lyall Grant about the exclusion for mercenaries from non ICC countries, US Permanent Representative Susan Rice did not take a question from Inner City Press, and none on this topic, despite having mentioned mercenaries in her speech.

Obama, Hillary & Susan Rice: mercenary impunity not shown

When Libya, but no longer Gadhafi, diplomat Ibrahim Dabbashi came out to take questions, Inner City Press asked him which countries the mercenaries used by Gadhafi come from.

He mentioned Algeria, Tunisia and Ethiopia -- highlighted by NGOs as non ICC members -- as well as Chad, Niger, Kenya and Guinea. So some mercenaries could be prosecuted by the ICC, and not others, under language demanded by the US Mission to the UN. Watch this site.

Here is the US-demanded paragraph:

6. Decides that nationals, current or former officials or personnel from a State outside the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya which is not a party to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court shall be subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of that State for all alleged acts or omissions arising out of or related to operations in the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya established or authorized by the Council, unless such exclusive jurisdiction has been expressly waived by the State.

Footnote: Araud blaming the US position on "parliamentary constraints" seemed to some a way to try to blame a decision by Obama's executive branch on the Republicans who recently took over the House of Representatives. But it was an Obama administration decision. More nuanced apologists blame the Defense Department for pulling rank on State. But the result is mercenaries firing freely.

Click for Mar 1, '11 BloggingHeads.tv re Libya, Sri Lanka, UN Corruption

These reports are usually also available through Google News and on Lexis-Nexis.

Click here for a Reuters AlertNet piece by this correspondent about Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army. Click here for an earlier Reuters AlertNet piece about the Somali National Reconciliation Congress, and the UN's $200,000 contribution from an undefined trust fund. Video Analysis here

Other, earlier Inner City Press are listed here, and some are available in the ProQuest service, and now on Lexis-Nexis.

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