Heather
Nauert Withdraws from Ambassador
Pursuit at UN Where Guterres
Corruption Continues
By Matthew
Russell Lee, CJR PFT NY
Post
UNITED NATIONS
GATE, February 16 – US
President Donald Trump's
choice to replace Nikki Haley
as US Ambassador to the UN,
Heather Nauert, has withdrawn
her name. "I am grateful to
President Trump and Secretary
Pompeo for the trust they
placed in me for considering
me for the position of U.S.
Ambassador to the United
Nations. However, the past two
months have been grueling for
my family and therefore it is
in the best interest of my
family that I withdraw my name
from consideration," Nauert
said. Now what? When Trump
nominated Haley as his
Ambassador to the UN, it
seemed she would be a
disruptor and clean up
corruption. As she prepares to
leave, though, at most one of
those things is true: she was
a disruptive force. But
Haley's disruption of the UN
was concentrated in her first
few months, when she famously
stood in the UN lobby and said
she would be "taking
names" of countries who
opposed US interests, and when
she
blocked Secretary
General Antonio Guterres'
nomination of Palestinian
candidate Salam Fayyad to be
the UN's new envoy to Libya.
After that,
however, Haley seemed to
settle down and go native at
the UN. Trump bragged at her
send-off that Haley got to
know "everyone" in the
organization. But not well
enough to get Russia's
Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia to
answer her calls before the
UN's mechanism on Syria's
chemical weapons expired. She
cast vetoes on Jerusalem and
Gaza, popular in some quarters
but hardly a measure of the
she-knows-everyone diplomacy
that Trump spoke of.
Haley called for
a UN Human Rights Council
Commission of Inquiry into the
murder in the Democratic
Republic of the Congo of
American expert Michael Sharp
and his Chilean-Swedish
colleague Zaida Catalan. But
the Commission never happened,
and by June
2018 Haley was standing
next to Mike Pompeo,
explaining why the US was
leaving the Human Rights
Council. The answer,
some said, was John Bolton...
Haley got her
fellow South Carolinian David
Beasley installed as the
head of the UN World Food
Program; at her Press-less
press conference as
president of the Security
Council in September 2018 a
South Carolina journalist
who'd flown up for the event
asked if she'd be taking the
Council members down to her
home state. It didn't happen -
until, in a different
form, just after her
resignation.
Perhaps
the most disappointing of
Haley's failures to disrupt,
or disruption interrupted, is
on UN corruption. UN Secretary
General Antonio Guterres no
fewer than 15
times since assuming
office in January 2017 has
used public money to fly to
his home in Lisbon, where his
spouse still lives. After for
Inner City Press I asked
questions about this, I was
ousted from the UN and Haley
did nothing. In fact, another
journalist was told by the UN
that the US Mission
supported my ouster.
Haley's spokesman also worked
for Samantha Power; her Deputy
Jonathan Cohen has yet
to speak to the Press, now
asking questions at the UN
Delegates Entrance gate.
Haley never even commented
much less demanded UN action
on a UN
bribery case proceeding
in Federal court in lower
Manhattan against Patrick Ho
of the China Energy Fund
Committee for allegedly
bribing then UN President of
the General Assembly Sam
Kutesa for oil and other
concessions in Uganda. While
Guterres has refused to even
start an audit to determine
the full scope of CEFC's
bribery at the UN, Haley has
stayed quiet. Perhaps an
expanded scope would call into
question her oft-repeated
claim that it is a new day at
the UN. It is not. The UN
tends to drag those who pass
through it to its level. So it
was time for Haley to declare
victory and move on.
After twenty four
Congressmembers urged Haley to
schedule a Security Council
meeting about the slaughter of
Anglophones in Cameroon, I
asked her about it, and she
said she was “open” to such a
Council meeting. But it never
happened, and now even amid
the re-coronation of 36 year
president Paul Biya, there is
no meeting on the horizon.
Haley came out a
winner when the New York Times
mis-reported that she had
accepted $52,000 curtains
for her penthouse apartment
(the curtains were bought and
paid for by the Obama
administration). But the real
story may have been her living
in a $58,000 a month
apartment. From there, how
could she criticize Guterres
spending public money to fly
home? Haley herself was taking
rides on private jets, as
detailed in a formal complaint
the day before her resignation
was made public.
Haley's shift from taking
names to taking selfies was
exemplified on the 4th of July
2018, when the UN gave her its
fourth floor Delegates Dining
Room and balcony for a party
to watch the fireworks.
Ambassadors of all stripes
lined up, wanting photos with
her just as she wanted photos
with them, to show how well
she was getting along. But
what that supposed to be the
point?
The UN is
the ultimate swamp, with
reform always a chimera,
blocked by immunity. Haley's
narrative is that she came and
quickly cleaned up the UN.
Twenty one months in, little
has been cleaned up. Perhaps
it was time to get out before
demands came for results and
not rhetoric. At the UN, the
corruption and censorship
continue -- including with the
discovery that under Guterres
the UN maintains a secret
"active ban" list that
includes "political activists'
- and Inner City Press. But
that's another thing that
Haley didn't act on, and
Nauert didn't have a chance
to. Who's next? That's another
story.
Watch this site.
***
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