At
UN
on Wikileaks, Ban in Glass Houses Won't Throw 1st Stone, Korea
Spying “Legitimate”
By
Matthew
Russell Lee
UNITED
NATIONS,
December 3 -- While at the UN public speakers Thursday tried
to put the Wikileaks scandal behind them, UN officials more quietly
told Inner City Press of their concerns. While the UN ostensibly
reports to all 192 member states, there are initiatives undertaken by
the Executive Office of the Secretary General which are mandated
neither by the Security Council nor the General Assembly.
Ban
Ki-moon for
example has a particular interest in the Korean peninsula. Early in
his term, Inner City Press obtained a copy of an internal memo about
how the UN should use its “advantage” to become a central player
on the peninsula. Later Ban's senior advisor Kim Won-soo, among with
UN political chief Lynn Pascoe, went to North Korea and provided a
cursory readout upon their return.
More
recently, a
document emerged about an upcoming December 6 Policy Committee
meeting about the Korean Peninsula. When Inner City Press asked about
it, Ban's acting Deputy Spokesman Farhan Haq said the memo had
somehow not been seen by any senior Ban administration official.
Just
as he has refused to provide Inner City Press with any requested
information about the frequent flyer miles retained by Ban, Pascoe
and USG Alain Le Roy, Haq refused to answer if a meeting would still
take place on December 6.
Several
officials
and diplomats used Ban's Korean initiatives as an example of
something a state might “want to spy on,” even “legitimately”
as one UN official put it.
UN's Ban and his CITO Choi, in the Glass House,
spying not shown
As
to why Ban has
not fought back more strenuously against the directive signed by US
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that his and UN Under Secretaries
Generals', SRSGs' and force commanders' e-mail passwords and frequent
flyer miles account numbers be collected, it was pointed out to Inner
City Press from UN sources that under Ban's Chief Information
Technology Officer Mr. Choi, these officials believe that all of
their communications and computers are surveilled by the Ban
administration.
One
well placed
official asked rhetorically, “How can Ban complain about being
spied on if he is spying himself?” Watch this site.
* * *
Wikileaks
Buzz
from Turkey to UN, But Ban Quiet with Clinton, Assange as
Terrorist?
By
Matthew
Russell Lee
UNITED
NATIONS,
December 1 -- As the new Wikileaks of US State Department
cables were the buzz at the UN on Wednesday, from Sri Lanka war
crimes to Russia's “Mafia state,” the UN Secretariat did all it
could to dodge questions about Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's
directive that the UN and its officials be spied on.
But
at a Turkish
Mission reception on Wednesday evening, a European Ambassador told
Inner City Press that the leaks were going to cause trouble within
countries all over the world. “Why did the US distribute these
cables so widely?” he asked. “When I have information, I write
only to my minister and his chief of staff, no one else.”
Turkey's
Prime
Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has threatened to sue the American
diplomats who cabled home that Erdogan has secret bank accounts in
Switzerland. But well placed sources tell Inner City Press that the
origin of the Swiss bank detail is the “Turkish minister who covers
the European Union process.”
So maybe the
lawsuit, if there is one,
should be filed in Turkey itself.
After
Secretary
General Ban Ki-moon met with Clinton in Astana, the UN said only
that
“they discussed... the complications caused by the recent massive
leak of US diplomatic cables.”
Inner
City Press
asked the UN's Counter-Terrorism Executive Director Mike Smith about
calls to designate Wikileaks and its founder Julian Assange as part
of a “Foreign Terrorist Organization.” Video here,
from Minute
17:40.
Erdogan & Kerim, once
& future UN? Inner City Press scoop here
Smith
said he would
“leave it up to the countries that are talking about that to work
it out through these systems, I'm not going to comment on that.” Of
course, it is within Smith's and the UN's stated job to speak on the
misuse of terrorism laws and designations.
Footnote:
beyond
Ban Ki-moon's meeting with Hillary Clinton, the UN on
Wednesday afternoon confirmed to Inner City Press what it had asked
about Ban's meeting with South Korea's foreign minister. Yes they
met, including about two conferences in Seoul. But there was
apparently no meeting with Ukraine's president, despite Ukrainian
press reports that there would be.
