In a Ban-less UN, It's Executions, Polisario and a Cheerleader from Another Planet

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

UNITED NATIONS, July 13 -- The UN this mid-July is disconcertingly empty. Security Council meetings, like the "mission report" scheduled for July 12, are cancelled without explanation. "Morning" Council meetings begin at 11:45, like the July 13 briefing by UN Peacekeeping's Jean-Marie Guehenno. 

            The biggest crowd of the week at the Council stakeout was for Western Sahara, out of which a mere press statement emerged. (The backdrop was Ban Ki-moon and his envoy Peter van Walsum showing then retracting a pro-Moroccan hand.) The representative of the Polisario Front, Ahmed Boukhari, last seen when the plugged was pulled on his stakeout interview on UN TV, was in the crowd. When asked about the plug-pulling, he shook his head. "They let movie actors speak here," he said. And it is true.

  [For the record, Mr. Boukhari said "There are two proposals on the table (and) both parties will remain engaged.. There's no place for other recommendations or other observations that instead of helping the process may create some problems for it."]

            A side story of the week involved a report that Ban Ki-moon's laptop and bank card (that's, Ban K card) were stolen. At Thursday noon briefing, deputy spokesperson Marie Okabe said the report has been retracted. Further inquiry by Inner City Press yielded that the item was first on a pro-Polisario web site, as hyperbole, then picked up, not tongue-in-cheek, by the Moroccan publication Al Ousboue wa al-Sahafi (which incidentally is something of a darling of media freedom groups in Europe). But, correspondents wanted to know, where is Ban Ki-moon's laptop?

            For most of the last two weeks, Mr. Ban was in Europe, and he has the photos to prove it. Speaking at Chatham House, he said that the Chatham House rules should apply at the UN, to stop "those who want to grandstand." The London Independent the next day snarkily reported on audience members who snoozed through Mr. Ban's talk. Note to Independent: stop grandstanding!

            The UN made a point of announcing, days earlier, that on July 17 Ban with meet with President Bush and members of Congress. On July 13, Inner City Press asked Ban's spokesperson about a request to Ban from six U.S. Senators, regarding the impending execution by North Korea of Son Jong Nam. The spokesperson say she would look into it; three hours later, the issue was not included in the UN's "highlights" (see below). To her credit, five hours later the Deputy Spokeswoman confirmed that the "letter about [the] dissident was received." But what's the response? Maybe we'll find out on July 17...

Mr. Ban goes to Chatham House (snoozers and grandstanders not shown)

            While overseas in Brussels, in a press conference in which Ban answered questions on Kosovo and Pakistan, the following was asked (and not answered)

 Q:  Mr Ban Ki-moon. Good morning.  I am sorry, but we don't always have the chance to have you in Europe. I want to know your personal opinion on the European Union initiative promoted by Italy for a moratorium on the death penalty in September at the United Nations. Thank you.

   SG: Should I limit [my answer] to migration? Maybe we can meet later, after this, I don’t want to turn this press conference into where we discuss all aspects of our United Nations agenda or world affairs.

      Clearly, Ban remains reticent on this issue. Why, then, even ask for Ban's view of Ethiopia's call for dozens of executions, or of China's execution of its head of food safety, or of Saudi Arabia's preparations to kill a Sri Lanka nanny who was 17 when the child she was watching died, apparently inadvertently? Why ask, if public executions by a UN-supported government don't draw comments? (Inner City Press has asked for Ban's comment on the Somalia TFG's public executions, without response; finally Deputy Secretary General Migiro responded with word about human rights, and to her credit, "we won't tolerate it," click here for that).

   In Brussels after badgering, which should not have been necessary, Ban finally came up with the following:

There is a growing tendency in the international community to see the phased moratorium of death sentences. Human rights should be fully protected and I support this tendency in the international community to see a gradual abolishment of the death penalties. 

            We'll see. Even in this UN slow week, some strange meetings take place. In the basement, the UN Development Program held a conference about the Legal Empowerment of the Power. They said, "no media," and had a guard posted outside the meeting.

            Upstairs on the fourth floor drinks and cut vegetables and dip were served as the UN's Amir Dossal, head of the UN Foundation for International Partnerships, hosted a strange informal reception to announce the Global Creative Leadership Summit. The founder and speaker -- with ethereal invocations of neuroscience and free trade -- was Louise T. Blouin MacBain, whom The Guardian has described as " a cheerleader from another planet."

           But which planet? The GCLS, slated for the days before the General Assembly general debate in September, includes (of course) neuro-scientists, as well as representatives from Goldman Sachs, ContiGroup, Burston-Marseller, Blackstone and James Wolfensohn himself. There's David Boies, Craig(slist) Newmark and Wiki-man Jimmy Wales. 

            What in God's name, other than religion, will they be discussing? Louise -- whose staff all call her "Madame," according again to The Guardian -- spoke against high taxes and about corruption in Africa; she praised, seemingly gratuitously, carbon emissions trading and Al Gore.

            Turning again to the wider world, in Beijing the UN's country coordinator (and UNDP resident representative) Khalid Malik said, of the Gore-organized Live Earth concerts, that with its "soaring carbon emissions, China is regarded as a crucial target for this message." Inner City Press has asked a spokesperson at the Chinese mission for their thoughts on UNDP, which ended the week ever-more embroiled in scandal.  But if you read the UN's own summary of its noon press briefing at which questions about investigations into UNDP's financial and employment practices were asked, you wouldn't know -- none of the questions were included. And so it goes at the UN.

Click here for Inner City Press' coverage of the UN Security Council's July 10 press statement on Guinea-Bissau

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