Inner City Press -- Investigative Reporting From the Inner City to Wall Street to the United Nations

With UN on Libya, 12 Notifiers May Mean Less Than That: Ukraine & UAE Cases

UNITED NATIONS, March 23 -- Still only 12 countries are listed as having provided notice to the UN under Security Council Resolution 1973, the same number as on the morning of March 22.

  The number of actual “partners” may even be lower. Beyond backtracking by the United Arab Emirates, based on “the West's position on Bahrain,” a well placed Council diplomat on Wednesday morning told Inner City Press that Ukraine, despite being announced by the UN as a notifier, is primarily concerned with its own citizens.

  On Tuesday, after first reporting Ukraine on the Security Council's list, Inner City Press questioned how a country which took more than a month to come through with attack helicopters for the UN Mission in Cote d'Ivoire would be able to meaningfully participate in what the US is calling Operation Odyssey Dawn.

  While the UN's list of twelve is sometimes presented as a list of supporters of the no fly zone and even bombing, when Pressed at Wednesday's noon briefing, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's spokesman Martin Nesirky insisted he had made it clear on Tuesday that these are only letter writers.

Here is what Nesirky said on March 22, about the UAE not yet Ukraine:

Spokesperson Nesirky: They notified the Secretariat under the terms of the resolution. I did not say that they will be taking part in enforcing a no-fly zone; I didn’t say that... I haven’t seen their notification, the specific letter, I haven’t seen that letter. We need to be clear that each of the countries, when notifying the Secretariat and when we transmit that notification to the Security Council, that notification can take different forms. The content is not the same for each one. Each country is saying something different about what measures it is taking or simply how it is supporting the resolution. But the details of each of those would need to come from the Member States concerned...If a Member State requests that a document should be circulated, in other words, made an official document that is circulated and available, then that will be done. But I don’t know any specific case what has happened.

The UN's daily Journal does on a delay include the letters, at least Ukraine's initial letter - click here. But Council sources say that Ukraine's position is not as described.

Inner City Press asked Nesirky if, even belatedly, the Secretary General and his Spokesperson's Office can provide public disclosure of these letters more frequently than the day's noon briefing. When we get then, we'll tell you, Nesirky said. We'll see.

Footnotes: Inner City Press asked Nesirky if Ban Ki-moon would like his briefing(s) on March 24 to teh Security Council to be public -- the one about his trip is thought to be closed door, but why shouldn't his briefing about Resolution 1973 be public? Punting, Nesirky said that is entirely up to the Council. So much for leadership on transparency.

 Nesirky also refused again to state whether Ban's envoy to Libya al-Khatib is a UN staff member, an Under Secretary General, or to confirm that he is still paid -- in seeming violation of the UN Charter -- by the government of Jordan, a country which has not yet notified under Resolution 1973 despite UK claims.