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Inner City Press, NY
Sept 7 2006
The UN and Nagorno-Karabakh: Flurries of Activity Leave Frozen
Conflicts Unchanged; Updates on Gaza, Gavels and Gbagbo
Byline: Matthew Russell Lee at the UN
UNITED NATIONS, September 7 -- The UN General Assembly met past 6
p.m. Thursday to approve by consensus a resolution entitled "The
situation in the occupied territories"... of Azerbaijan. Armenia
disassociated itself from the consensus, expressing its displeasure
at the title and at the notion of its dispute with Azerbaijan being
considered in the UN. Other self-declared stakeholders in this frozen
conflict by proxy spoke before the resolution passed. The United
States, which considers itself an interested party with respect to
every disagreement and territory, spoke in favor of the resolution.
So did Ukraine, on behalf of "the GUAM states" -- Georgia, Ukraine,
Azerbaijan and Moldova. Turkey spoke in favor, as did Pakistan on
behalf of the Organization of the Islamic Conference.
All this diplomatic firepower was brought to bear on a
final resolution consisting of five paragraphs, primarily directing
the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe to assess
fires in the affected territories, to involve the UN Environment
Program in rehabilitation and to report back to the UN General
Assembly by April 30, 2007.
Still waiting, per WFP
What were the two days of negotiations about? asked an
observer in the General Assembly's cheap seats, where few of the
headphones are working.
Armenia does not want to the issue before the UN, and
objects to the phrase "occupied territories of Azerbaijan" when
referring to Nagorno-Karabakh and environs.
If the UN is involved in the Palestinian occupied
territories, about which an UN agency gave a briefing on Thursday,
and in similar issues in Abkhazia, why has it not been involved in
Nagorno - Karabakh? What is the UN's involvement in Nagorno -
Karabakh?
The UN Security Council passed four resolutions on
Nagorno - Karabakh between April and November of 1993. Resolution 822
called for a cessation of hostilities. Resolutions 853, 874 and 884
continued in that vein. The ceasefire, such as it was and is, was
negotiated by Russia in May 1994. Since then the main venue of
action, or inaction, has been the 11-nation Minsk Group of the OSCE,
with Russia, France and the U.S. as co-chairs. Since all three are
members of the UN Security Council's Permanent Five, with veto
rights, one might wonder why they prefer this other venue. To assess
UN involvement in the territories in 2006, Inner City Press on
Wednesday asked the UN Spokesman's Office. The oral answer was that
even the UN Development Program has no operations in Nagorno -
Karabakh, only the World Food Program. Then on Thursday the following
was provided:
The Joint UNEP / OCHA Environment Unit has been working in close
collaboration with colleagues in UNEP, who have been in direct
contact with representatives from Azerbaijan and Armenia and the
OSCE, which sent a mission to the region in July of this year. The
Joint Unit, through our relationship with the Global Fire Monitoring
Centre, which is our partner on forest fire-related matters,
identified experts last month who could, potentially, go on an
assessment mission. The OSCE has been requested to undertake another
mission and is considering it. It sought UNEP's advice on experts,
which in turn contacted the Joint Unit. We have, therefore, brokered
a relationship between the Global Fire Monitoring Centre and the
OSCE. So our identified experts are speaking with staff from OSCE.
The Joint Unit will continue to support all those involved in this
issue.
There are areas in the world which the UN does not impact
via Security Council resolutions, but in which it is a major
humanitarian player. Nagorno-Karabakh, like for another example
Casamance in Senegal, is not one of those regions. It is sometimes
said that if you live in a region in the clutches of one of the
Permanent Five members of the Security Council, you're out of luck at
the UN. But the list of those out of luck at the UN is longer than
that. And Nagorno - Karabakh... is on that list.
In the General Assembly chamber, the scaffolding is now
done, so the meeting was held there. The first part of the meeting,
headlined by Jan Eliasson and Mark Malloch Brown, concerned conflict
prevention. Sitting in the lower audience seats, few of the
headphones worked or provided sound. Sitting behind the S's, one
could see that among those nations not attending the GA session on
conflict prevention was... Sierra Leone, regarding which
Secretary-General Kofi Annan recently issued a report, S/2006/695,
stating in part that "the continued border dispute between Sierra
Leone and Guinea remains a source of serious concern." While the
report does not name it, the dispute surrounds the diamond-rich town
of Yenga. As usual, follow the money.
Regarding another, higher profile occupied territory,
Thursday at noon the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine
Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) briefing on Gaza revealed among
other things that while the U.S. Overseas Private Investment
Corporation says it will pay on its insurance policy on the Gaza
power station, rebuilding will take 18 months and power is for now
sporadic.
At UN Spokesman Stephane Dujarric's noon briefing, Inner
City Press asked three questions, one of which, concerning housing
subsidies by governments to UN employees, was summarily preempted
with the statement that an answer will come in the near future. On
Cote D'Ivoire, where a toxic dumping has resulted in the disbanding
of the cabinet, the UN Spokesman responded that the Ivorian prime
minister called the UN's head of peacekeeping and, as usually,
everyone should stay calm. The benefits of this chaos to
still-in-power Laurent Gbagbo are apparent to some. On whether the
UN's envoy on extra-judicial killings will as requested visit Nigeria
as well as Lebanon, a response one supposes will come.
Mr. Dujarric's sometimes-fellow briefer at noon, Pragati Pascale,
gave a preview of the afternoon's General Assembly action including
on Nagorno - Karabakh, then fielded following her statement about a
gavel passing, fielded a strange but concrete question about whether
it was the same unique gavel, with wood looking like flame, used when
the budget cap was lifted. Even before 5 p.m. she responded: "
President Eliasson will, indeed, pass the fancy ceremonial gavel to
the incoming President. This was a gift to the General Assembly from
Iceland. President Eliasson did receive a copy of the gavel from the
Secretary-General at the end of the main part of the session last
December, so he can take that home as a remembrance of his time
here." Speak, memory! So to their detriment say those of Karabakh...
Feedback: editorial [at] innercitypress.com
UN Office: S-453A, UN, NY 10017 USA Tel: 212-963-1439
Reporter's mobile: 718-716-3540
Search WWW Search innercitypress.com
At the UN, Micro-States Simmer Under the Assembly's Surface, While
Incoming Council President Dodges Most Questions
Byline: Matthew Russell Lee at the UN
UNITED NATIONS, September 5 -- Nagorno Karabakh, one of the world
most frozen and forgotten conflicts, surfaced at the UN on Tuesday,
if only for ten minutes. The General Assembly was scheduled to vote
on a resolution concerning fires in the occupied territories of
Azerbaijan. The diplomats assembled, or began to assemble, at 4 p.m..
At 4:15 it was announced that in light of ongoing negotiations, the
meeting was cancelled, perhaps to reconvene Wednesday at 11:30.
Sources close to the negotiations told Inner City Press
that the rub is paragraph 4 of the draft resolution, which requests
that the Secretary-General report to the UN General Assembly on the
conflict. Armenia wants the matter to remain before the Minsk Group
of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which has
presided over the problem for more than a decade. Leading the OSCE's
Minsk Group are Russia, France and the United States, members of the
veto-wielding Permanent Five on the UN Security Council, nations
which Azerbaijan claims have ignored its sovereignty as well as
blocking Security Council action, as for example Russia has on
Chechnya.
Of the fires, Azerbaijan has characterized them as
Armenian arson, and has asked for international pressure to allow it
to reach the disputed territories where the fires have been.
Nagorno-Karabakh, per WFP
At a July 13, 2006 briefing on the BTC pipeline, Inner
City Press asked the Ambassador of Azerbaijan Yashar Aliyev about the
pipeline's avoidance of Armenia. We cannot deal with them until they
stop occupying our territory, Ambassador Aliyev said. "You mean
Nagorno - Karabakh?" Not only that, Amb. Aliyev answered. That's only
four percent. Few people know this, but Armenia has occupied twenty
percent of our territory.
Both Amenia's Foreign Minister Vartan Oskanian and UN
Ambassador Armen Martirosian have said publicly in the past month
that if Azerbaijan continues pushing the issue before the United
Nations, the existing peace talks will stop. Armenian sources
privately speak more darkly of an alliance of Georgia, Ukraine,
Azerbaijan and Moldova, collectively intent on involving the UN in
reigning in their breakaway regions including South Ossetia,
Nagorno-Karabakh and Transdniestria -- examples of what some call the
micro-states. Armenia is concerned that in the UN as opposed to OSCE,
Azerbaijan might be able to rally Islamic nations to its side.
It is not only to predominantly Muslim nations that the
Azeri's are reaching out. The nation's foreign minister Elmar
Mammadyarov met recently with this Swedish counterpart Jan Eliasson,
the outgoing president of the General Assembly.
Following Tuesday's General Assembly postponement, Inner
City Press asked Mr. Eliasson if, in light of his involvement in
reaching the 1994 cease-fire, he thinks the GA might have more luck
solving the Nagorno-Karabakh than the OSCE has.
"I hope so," he said. "I'm in favor of an active General
Assembly." He recounted his shuttle diplomacy to Baku in the early
90s. And then he was gone.
Elsewhere in the UN at Tuesday, the income president of
the Security Council, Greek Ambassador Adamantios Vassilakis held a
press conference on the Council's plan of work for September. Inner
City Press asked when the Council will get the long-awaited briefing
on violations of the arms embargo on Somalia. Amb. Vassilakis
responded about a meeting on September 25, at Kenya's request, on the
idea of the IGAD force in Somalia. Inner City Press asked what has
happened with the resolution on the Lord's Resistance Army of which
the UK has spoken so much. It will be up to them to introduce the
motion," Amb. Vassilakis replied. He did not reply on the issue of
the outstanding International Criminal Court indictments against LRA
leaders including Joseph Kony and Vincent Otti.
Inner City Press asked why, on Ivory Coast, the
long-delayed report by the Secretary-General's expert on the
prevention of genocide has not been released. In this response, Amb.
Vassilakis grew animated, saying that one has to choose between
justice and peace. This implies that the finished report identifies
alleged perpetrators, as pertains to genocide, but is being withheld
either to facilitate peace, which has not come, or as negotiating
leverage over some of the perpetrators. To be continued, throughout
the month.
Rare UN Sunshine From If Not In Chad While Blind on Somalia and
Zimbabwe, UNDP With Shell in its Ear on Nigeria
BYLINE: Matthew Russell Lee at the UN
UNITED NATIONS, August 29 -- In Chad there are ninety political
parties and over seventy rebel groups, with a focus on overthrowing
Idriss Deby. Meanwhile Deby last Friday ordered Chevron and Petronas
out of the country, for failure to pay taxes.
Chad is the fifth poorest country in the world, with countries in
turmoil or trouble along at least half of its perimeter. To the west,
Niger and to the east, on the other side of camps housing over
200,000 refugees from Darfur, lies Sudan. To the south, the Central
African Republic with its own rebel groups. In the tri-border area
of the Sudan, Chad and the CAR is a lawless zone of mercenaries for
hire, and area none of the three governments control.
Tuesday the head of the UN's operations in Chad, Kingsley
Amaning, provided reporters a lengthy and well-received briefing. He
began by sketching how the situation in Darfur is further
destabilizing Chad, spreading ethnic conflict and banditry across
borders. Mr. Amaning said that alongside 90 political parties, the
roster of rebel groups has grown from 47 to 72. Inner City Press
asked, as even invited political parties have, why the rebels are
excluded from Deby's new national dialogue. There are a dozen refugee
camps in eastern Chad, each with fifteen to twenty thousand
residents, in a region where the average town size is only three
thousand. In fact, Mr. Amaning said, right now "the quality of life
of the refugees is higher than the quality of life of the local
population."
Mr. Amaning, originally from Ghana and having previously
served the UN in Guinea, has been in Chad for a year and a half.
During that time, rebels marching on the capital N'djamena were
stopped only by a bomb dropped by the French air force. A colleague
of Mr. Amaning, OCHA Chad desk officer Aurelien Buffler, noted in an
interview that the official description of the French bomb was a
"warming shot." He added that Chad is not even on the agenda of the
Security Council and that raising funds for development is difficult,
since donors don't know where the money goes. Later this week 25
donors led by Canada will meet with Mr. Amaning in UN Headquarters.
The dichotomy seems to be that while emergency humanitarian funds can
be raised, long-term funds for development are more difficult. Mr.
Amaning said, "Humanitarians get resources, but we don't follow up
political solutions with development so that people have jobs."
Refugees in Chad per UNHCR
Inner City Press interviewed Mr. Amaning after the
briefing, and asked him first about specific vulnerable refugee camps
near the border with Darfur, Am Nabak and Ouve Casson. Mr. Amaning
confirmed that these camps will be moved, belated, to a lot north of
Biltine, now that it's thought there is underground water on the
government-owned site.
Turning to history, the UN Security Council, history and
one of its veto-wielding Permanent Five, Inner City Press asked about
France's involvement. Mr. Amaning said that the UN principles are to
oppose violent takeovers and to encourage dialogue. "I tell the
French Ambassador that instead of trying to explain what type of
intervention that was," Mr. Amaning said, referring to France's
bomb-drop in support of Idriss Deby, "they should say they did it on
behalf of the international community, so there would be no violent
overthrow."
Speaking more generally, or regionally, Mr. Amaning said,
"If we do not stabilize Darfur," weapons will continue to spread
throughout the region. "It's a line that's going to join up... from
DRC through Central Africa to the northern part of Uganda, to Chad
and the Sudan -- where are we going?" At least Mr. Amaning is
asking.
For weeks Inner City Press has asked all and sundry in UN
Headquarters to confirm or deny that Ethiopian troops are present in
Somalia. Kofi Annan's representative for Somalia, Francois Lonseny
Fall, skirted the issue despite six questions from Inner City Press
last time he was in New York. Mr. Fall's spokesman has told Inner
City Press to look elsewhere, since his office does not have a
monitoring mandate in Somalia. In a stakeout interview, the head of
the UN's Department of Political Affairs Ibrahim Gambari responded
with generalities. An email followed, that DPA relies for information
on Mr. Fall's office -- which has not monitoring mandate.
Kofi Annan's spokesman's office suggested that Inner City
Press contact the members of the group monitoring the UN's Somalia
arms embargo. Group member Joel Salek confirmed receipt of Inner City
Press' request, but said he would "give floor to Bruno [Schiemsky],
the Chairman of our Group, to answer your questions." Time passed,
Inner City Press sent a second request. Mr. Schiemsky responded,
"Sorry, at this stage I have no comments. I need first to brief the
Sanctions Committee" of the Security Council.
Tuesday at the Security Council stakeout, Inner City
Press asked UK Ambassador Emyr Jones Parry who in the UN can speak
regarding Somalia. Amb. Jones Parry responded that the UK is working
on a resolution. Video here.
But when Inner City Press five minutes later asked the President
of the Council, Ghana's Nana Effah-Apenteng, about Amb. Jones Parry's
resolution, the Ghanaian Ambassador said no resolution has been
introduced. Video here. Meanwhile the Horn of Africa slides toward
regional war.
Earlier this year at the African Union summit in Banjul,
Kofi Annal pulled back from involvement in Zimbabwe, saying he was
deferring to the new mediator Ben Mkapa. Now documents from the AU
submit show that Mkapa never accepted the role of mediator. Tuesday
Inner City Press asked Kofi Annan's spokesman if this now means that
the Secretary-General will re-engage. Video here, at Minute 21:50.
The spokesman said he will respond; this has not taken place by 6
p.m. deadline.
Nor as the spokesman answered Inner City Press' question
of Monday, about why UNDP took funding from Shell Petroleum to write
a report on human development in the Niger Delta, where Shell has a
long record of violating human rights. I will get you an answer, the
spokesman said. We're still waiting...
At the UN, from Casamance to Transdniestria, Kosovans to Lezgines,
Micro-States as Powerful's Playthings
Byline: Matthew Russell Lee at the UN
UNITED NATIONS, August 25 -- Because they are so often forgotten,
today's report is micro-states. The thread ran through UN
Headquarters on Friday, from noon briefing to stakeout to UNCA Club
upstairs. Kofi Annan's spokesman on his way to the podium stopped to
tell Inner City Press not to ask certain questions. Some involved the
housing subsidy story below, one involved the Casamance region of
Senegal, where fighting is raging and refugees flee.
Thursday Inner City Press had asked who in the UN, other than the
refugee agency UNHCR, was addressing Casamance. Friday the spokesman
whispered, "On Casamance I don't have anything more than when UNHCR
has said." So instead Inner City Press asked about a seminal
micro-state, Kosovo. At a press conference hours earlier in Pristina,
the UN's mediator Martii Ahtisaari had announced that no package will
be put before the Security Council in September. Inner City Press
asked, but what of the postponed municipal elections? Video here, at
Minute 29.
The spokesman's office arranged a conference call to
UNMIK in Pristina, where the acting press chief said no elections can
be held in the winter anyway. The OSCE, he said, estimates that to
schedule elections takes at least six months. So much for local
democracy, even in areas run by the UN. Kofi Annan's incoming envoy
to Kosovo should have a better answer. We'll see. Other data the
spokesman belated provided on Friday is being analyzed.
The micro-states theory is that if Kosovo becomes fully
independent, the same will happen -- or be called for by Russia -- in
Abkhazia and South Ossetia, in Transdniestria and even Ajara in
Georgia. From this list we can drill down even keeper. Inner City
Press asked Kazakh Ambassador Yerzhan Kazykhanov about a civil
disturbance earlier in the week in Aktau on the Caspian coast,
involving attacks on immigrants from the striving micro-state of
Chechnya, on Azeris and the little-known Lezgines, who come from
Dagestan.
"There are many groups," the Kazakh Ambassador said, adding that
his recent flight from Almaty to Aqtobe took nearly four hours. On
the map he pointed at Oral and noted that World War II passed
through. In his prepared remarks, Kazakhstan's Ambassador stressed,
not without reason, that the "closure of the Semipalatinsk testing
site was one of the most significant events in the field of nuclear
disarmament." Asked about Kazakhstan's joint anti-terror operations
with China in Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, like Chechnya
another potential micro-state blocked by one of the Permanent Five on
the UN Security Council, the Kazakh Ambassador assured that the
fighting of terror has nothing to do with refugees. We'll see.
Slovakian limbo per UNHCR
But back to the micro-state of Casamance, which was part
of what's now Guinea-Bissau until France took it. The civil strife
dates back at least to 1982, and yet the UN and Security Council do
nothing about it. At a stakeout interview on Friday afternoon, Inner
City Press asked the Council's president Nana Effah-Apenteng if
Casamance is on his radar. No, the Ghanaian Ambassador replied.
"Maybe you are more up-to-date on this issue than I am." Video here,
at Minute 8:47. A well placed source upstairs at the UN noted that
Senegal keeps it quiet. As Chechnya is to Russia, in a sense,
Casamance is to Senegal. Ah, the micro-states...
At deadline in Conference Room 3 in the basement, the disability
rights convention was being endlessly discussed. Ten days ago the
chairman of the Ad Hoc Committee on the Convention, Don MacKay, said
that if current efforts to block the creation of a treaty monitoring
body are successful, the Convention may well not be enacted. "And
that would be shabby treatment," Mr. MacKay said, citing a long
history of societies' discrimination against the disabled.
Click here for video and here for the text of the draft Convention.
Inner City Press asked if the United States is among the
countries opposing any monitoring of countries' performance under the
Convention, similar to the approach the U.S. took in derailing the
Small Arms meeting at the UN earlier this year. Mr. MacKay
acknowledged that the U.S. is among six or seven countries raising
such concerns, but stated that the U.S. position does not seem
"doctrinal" or doctrinaire.
The afternoon the conference would wrap up, the UN briefer Thomas
Schindlmayr resisted naming the countries opposed for example to the
reference to countries' occupation. One journalist loudly left the
room. Later this list became clear, including the U.S., Australia,
Israel. And at 7:52 p.m., amid applause, the report was adopted.
http://www.innercitypress.com/unhq090706 .html
Sept 7 2006
The UN and Nagorno-Karabakh: Flurries of Activity Leave Frozen
Conflicts Unchanged; Updates on Gaza, Gavels and Gbagbo
Byline: Matthew Russell Lee at the UN
UNITED NATIONS, September 7 -- The UN General Assembly met past 6
p.m. Thursday to approve by consensus a resolution entitled "The
situation in the occupied territories"... of Azerbaijan. Armenia
disassociated itself from the consensus, expressing its displeasure
at the title and at the notion of its dispute with Azerbaijan being
considered in the UN. Other self-declared stakeholders in this frozen
conflict by proxy spoke before the resolution passed. The United
States, which considers itself an interested party with respect to
every disagreement and territory, spoke in favor of the resolution.
So did Ukraine, on behalf of "the GUAM states" -- Georgia, Ukraine,
Azerbaijan and Moldova. Turkey spoke in favor, as did Pakistan on
behalf of the Organization of the Islamic Conference.
All this diplomatic firepower was brought to bear on a
final resolution consisting of five paragraphs, primarily directing
the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe to assess
fires in the affected territories, to involve the UN Environment
Program in rehabilitation and to report back to the UN General
Assembly by April 30, 2007.
Still waiting, per WFP
What were the two days of negotiations about? asked an
observer in the General Assembly's cheap seats, where few of the
headphones are working.
Armenia does not want to the issue before the UN, and
objects to the phrase "occupied territories of Azerbaijan" when
referring to Nagorno-Karabakh and environs.
If the UN is involved in the Palestinian occupied
territories, about which an UN agency gave a briefing on Thursday,
and in similar issues in Abkhazia, why has it not been involved in
Nagorno - Karabakh? What is the UN's involvement in Nagorno -
Karabakh?
The UN Security Council passed four resolutions on
Nagorno - Karabakh between April and November of 1993. Resolution 822
called for a cessation of hostilities. Resolutions 853, 874 and 884
continued in that vein. The ceasefire, such as it was and is, was
negotiated by Russia in May 1994. Since then the main venue of
action, or inaction, has been the 11-nation Minsk Group of the OSCE,
with Russia, France and the U.S. as co-chairs. Since all three are
members of the UN Security Council's Permanent Five, with veto
rights, one might wonder why they prefer this other venue. To assess
UN involvement in the territories in 2006, Inner City Press on
Wednesday asked the UN Spokesman's Office. The oral answer was that
even the UN Development Program has no operations in Nagorno -
Karabakh, only the World Food Program. Then on Thursday the following
was provided:
The Joint UNEP / OCHA Environment Unit has been working in close
collaboration with colleagues in UNEP, who have been in direct
contact with representatives from Azerbaijan and Armenia and the
OSCE, which sent a mission to the region in July of this year. The
Joint Unit, through our relationship with the Global Fire Monitoring
Centre, which is our partner on forest fire-related matters,
identified experts last month who could, potentially, go on an
assessment mission. The OSCE has been requested to undertake another
mission and is considering it. It sought UNEP's advice on experts,
which in turn contacted the Joint Unit. We have, therefore, brokered
a relationship between the Global Fire Monitoring Centre and the
OSCE. So our identified experts are speaking with staff from OSCE.
The Joint Unit will continue to support all those involved in this
issue.
There are areas in the world which the UN does not impact
via Security Council resolutions, but in which it is a major
humanitarian player. Nagorno-Karabakh, like for another example
Casamance in Senegal, is not one of those regions. It is sometimes
said that if you live in a region in the clutches of one of the
Permanent Five members of the Security Council, you're out of luck at
the UN. But the list of those out of luck at the UN is longer than
that. And Nagorno - Karabakh... is on that list.
In the General Assembly chamber, the scaffolding is now
done, so the meeting was held there. The first part of the meeting,
headlined by Jan Eliasson and Mark Malloch Brown, concerned conflict
prevention. Sitting in the lower audience seats, few of the
headphones worked or provided sound. Sitting behind the S's, one
could see that among those nations not attending the GA session on
conflict prevention was... Sierra Leone, regarding which
Secretary-General Kofi Annan recently issued a report, S/2006/695,
stating in part that "the continued border dispute between Sierra
Leone and Guinea remains a source of serious concern." While the
report does not name it, the dispute surrounds the diamond-rich town
of Yenga. As usual, follow the money.
Regarding another, higher profile occupied territory,
Thursday at noon the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine
Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) briefing on Gaza revealed among
other things that while the U.S. Overseas Private Investment
Corporation says it will pay on its insurance policy on the Gaza
power station, rebuilding will take 18 months and power is for now
sporadic.
At UN Spokesman Stephane Dujarric's noon briefing, Inner
City Press asked three questions, one of which, concerning housing
subsidies by governments to UN employees, was summarily preempted
with the statement that an answer will come in the near future. On
Cote D'Ivoire, where a toxic dumping has resulted in the disbanding
of the cabinet, the UN Spokesman responded that the Ivorian prime
minister called the UN's head of peacekeeping and, as usually,
everyone should stay calm. The benefits of this chaos to
still-in-power Laurent Gbagbo are apparent to some. On whether the
UN's envoy on extra-judicial killings will as requested visit Nigeria
as well as Lebanon, a response one supposes will come.
Mr. Dujarric's sometimes-fellow briefer at noon, Pragati Pascale,
gave a preview of the afternoon's General Assembly action including
on Nagorno - Karabakh, then fielded following her statement about a
gavel passing, fielded a strange but concrete question about whether
it was the same unique gavel, with wood looking like flame, used when
the budget cap was lifted. Even before 5 p.m. she responded: "
President Eliasson will, indeed, pass the fancy ceremonial gavel to
the incoming President. This was a gift to the General Assembly from
Iceland. President Eliasson did receive a copy of the gavel from the
Secretary-General at the end of the main part of the session last
December, so he can take that home as a remembrance of his time
here." Speak, memory! So to their detriment say those of Karabakh...
Feedback: editorial [at] innercitypress.com
UN Office: S-453A, UN, NY 10017 USA Tel: 212-963-1439
Reporter's mobile: 718-716-3540
Search WWW Search innercitypress.com
At the UN, Micro-States Simmer Under the Assembly's Surface, While
Incoming Council President Dodges Most Questions
Byline: Matthew Russell Lee at the UN
UNITED NATIONS, September 5 -- Nagorno Karabakh, one of the world
most frozen and forgotten conflicts, surfaced at the UN on Tuesday,
if only for ten minutes. The General Assembly was scheduled to vote
on a resolution concerning fires in the occupied territories of
Azerbaijan. The diplomats assembled, or began to assemble, at 4 p.m..
At 4:15 it was announced that in light of ongoing negotiations, the
meeting was cancelled, perhaps to reconvene Wednesday at 11:30.
Sources close to the negotiations told Inner City Press
that the rub is paragraph 4 of the draft resolution, which requests
that the Secretary-General report to the UN General Assembly on the
conflict. Armenia wants the matter to remain before the Minsk Group
of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which has
presided over the problem for more than a decade. Leading the OSCE's
Minsk Group are Russia, France and the United States, members of the
veto-wielding Permanent Five on the UN Security Council, nations
which Azerbaijan claims have ignored its sovereignty as well as
blocking Security Council action, as for example Russia has on
Chechnya.
Of the fires, Azerbaijan has characterized them as
Armenian arson, and has asked for international pressure to allow it
to reach the disputed territories where the fires have been.
Nagorno-Karabakh, per WFP
At a July 13, 2006 briefing on the BTC pipeline, Inner
City Press asked the Ambassador of Azerbaijan Yashar Aliyev about the
pipeline's avoidance of Armenia. We cannot deal with them until they
stop occupying our territory, Ambassador Aliyev said. "You mean
Nagorno - Karabakh?" Not only that, Amb. Aliyev answered. That's only
four percent. Few people know this, but Armenia has occupied twenty
percent of our territory.
Both Amenia's Foreign Minister Vartan Oskanian and UN
Ambassador Armen Martirosian have said publicly in the past month
that if Azerbaijan continues pushing the issue before the United
Nations, the existing peace talks will stop. Armenian sources
privately speak more darkly of an alliance of Georgia, Ukraine,
Azerbaijan and Moldova, collectively intent on involving the UN in
reigning in their breakaway regions including South Ossetia,
Nagorno-Karabakh and Transdniestria -- examples of what some call the
micro-states. Armenia is concerned that in the UN as opposed to OSCE,
Azerbaijan might be able to rally Islamic nations to its side.
It is not only to predominantly Muslim nations that the
Azeri's are reaching out. The nation's foreign minister Elmar
Mammadyarov met recently with this Swedish counterpart Jan Eliasson,
the outgoing president of the General Assembly.
Following Tuesday's General Assembly postponement, Inner
City Press asked Mr. Eliasson if, in light of his involvement in
reaching the 1994 cease-fire, he thinks the GA might have more luck
solving the Nagorno-Karabakh than the OSCE has.
"I hope so," he said. "I'm in favor of an active General
Assembly." He recounted his shuttle diplomacy to Baku in the early
90s. And then he was gone.
Elsewhere in the UN at Tuesday, the income president of
the Security Council, Greek Ambassador Adamantios Vassilakis held a
press conference on the Council's plan of work for September. Inner
City Press asked when the Council will get the long-awaited briefing
on violations of the arms embargo on Somalia. Amb. Vassilakis
responded about a meeting on September 25, at Kenya's request, on the
idea of the IGAD force in Somalia. Inner City Press asked what has
happened with the resolution on the Lord's Resistance Army of which
the UK has spoken so much. It will be up to them to introduce the
motion," Amb. Vassilakis replied. He did not reply on the issue of
the outstanding International Criminal Court indictments against LRA
leaders including Joseph Kony and Vincent Otti.
Inner City Press asked why, on Ivory Coast, the
long-delayed report by the Secretary-General's expert on the
prevention of genocide has not been released. In this response, Amb.
Vassilakis grew animated, saying that one has to choose between
justice and peace. This implies that the finished report identifies
alleged perpetrators, as pertains to genocide, but is being withheld
either to facilitate peace, which has not come, or as negotiating
leverage over some of the perpetrators. To be continued, throughout
the month.
Rare UN Sunshine From If Not In Chad While Blind on Somalia and
Zimbabwe, UNDP With Shell in its Ear on Nigeria
BYLINE: Matthew Russell Lee at the UN
UNITED NATIONS, August 29 -- In Chad there are ninety political
parties and over seventy rebel groups, with a focus on overthrowing
Idriss Deby. Meanwhile Deby last Friday ordered Chevron and Petronas
out of the country, for failure to pay taxes.
Chad is the fifth poorest country in the world, with countries in
turmoil or trouble along at least half of its perimeter. To the west,
Niger and to the east, on the other side of camps housing over
200,000 refugees from Darfur, lies Sudan. To the south, the Central
African Republic with its own rebel groups. In the tri-border area
of the Sudan, Chad and the CAR is a lawless zone of mercenaries for
hire, and area none of the three governments control.
Tuesday the head of the UN's operations in Chad, Kingsley
Amaning, provided reporters a lengthy and well-received briefing. He
began by sketching how the situation in Darfur is further
destabilizing Chad, spreading ethnic conflict and banditry across
borders. Mr. Amaning said that alongside 90 political parties, the
roster of rebel groups has grown from 47 to 72. Inner City Press
asked, as even invited political parties have, why the rebels are
excluded from Deby's new national dialogue. There are a dozen refugee
camps in eastern Chad, each with fifteen to twenty thousand
residents, in a region where the average town size is only three
thousand. In fact, Mr. Amaning said, right now "the quality of life
of the refugees is higher than the quality of life of the local
population."
Mr. Amaning, originally from Ghana and having previously
served the UN in Guinea, has been in Chad for a year and a half.
During that time, rebels marching on the capital N'djamena were
stopped only by a bomb dropped by the French air force. A colleague
of Mr. Amaning, OCHA Chad desk officer Aurelien Buffler, noted in an
interview that the official description of the French bomb was a
"warming shot." He added that Chad is not even on the agenda of the
Security Council and that raising funds for development is difficult,
since donors don't know where the money goes. Later this week 25
donors led by Canada will meet with Mr. Amaning in UN Headquarters.
The dichotomy seems to be that while emergency humanitarian funds can
be raised, long-term funds for development are more difficult. Mr.
Amaning said, "Humanitarians get resources, but we don't follow up
political solutions with development so that people have jobs."
Refugees in Chad per UNHCR
Inner City Press interviewed Mr. Amaning after the
briefing, and asked him first about specific vulnerable refugee camps
near the border with Darfur, Am Nabak and Ouve Casson. Mr. Amaning
confirmed that these camps will be moved, belated, to a lot north of
Biltine, now that it's thought there is underground water on the
government-owned site.
Turning to history, the UN Security Council, history and
one of its veto-wielding Permanent Five, Inner City Press asked about
France's involvement. Mr. Amaning said that the UN principles are to
oppose violent takeovers and to encourage dialogue. "I tell the
French Ambassador that instead of trying to explain what type of
intervention that was," Mr. Amaning said, referring to France's
bomb-drop in support of Idriss Deby, "they should say they did it on
behalf of the international community, so there would be no violent
overthrow."
Speaking more generally, or regionally, Mr. Amaning said,
"If we do not stabilize Darfur," weapons will continue to spread
throughout the region. "It's a line that's going to join up... from
DRC through Central Africa to the northern part of Uganda, to Chad
and the Sudan -- where are we going?" At least Mr. Amaning is
asking.
For weeks Inner City Press has asked all and sundry in UN
Headquarters to confirm or deny that Ethiopian troops are present in
Somalia. Kofi Annan's representative for Somalia, Francois Lonseny
Fall, skirted the issue despite six questions from Inner City Press
last time he was in New York. Mr. Fall's spokesman has told Inner
City Press to look elsewhere, since his office does not have a
monitoring mandate in Somalia. In a stakeout interview, the head of
the UN's Department of Political Affairs Ibrahim Gambari responded
with generalities. An email followed, that DPA relies for information
on Mr. Fall's office -- which has not monitoring mandate.
Kofi Annan's spokesman's office suggested that Inner City
Press contact the members of the group monitoring the UN's Somalia
arms embargo. Group member Joel Salek confirmed receipt of Inner City
Press' request, but said he would "give floor to Bruno [Schiemsky],
the Chairman of our Group, to answer your questions." Time passed,
Inner City Press sent a second request. Mr. Schiemsky responded,
"Sorry, at this stage I have no comments. I need first to brief the
Sanctions Committee" of the Security Council.
Tuesday at the Security Council stakeout, Inner City
Press asked UK Ambassador Emyr Jones Parry who in the UN can speak
regarding Somalia. Amb. Jones Parry responded that the UK is working
on a resolution. Video here.
But when Inner City Press five minutes later asked the President
of the Council, Ghana's Nana Effah-Apenteng, about Amb. Jones Parry's
resolution, the Ghanaian Ambassador said no resolution has been
introduced. Video here. Meanwhile the Horn of Africa slides toward
regional war.
Earlier this year at the African Union summit in Banjul,
Kofi Annal pulled back from involvement in Zimbabwe, saying he was
deferring to the new mediator Ben Mkapa. Now documents from the AU
submit show that Mkapa never accepted the role of mediator. Tuesday
Inner City Press asked Kofi Annan's spokesman if this now means that
the Secretary-General will re-engage. Video here, at Minute 21:50.
The spokesman said he will respond; this has not taken place by 6
p.m. deadline.
Nor as the spokesman answered Inner City Press' question
of Monday, about why UNDP took funding from Shell Petroleum to write
a report on human development in the Niger Delta, where Shell has a
long record of violating human rights. I will get you an answer, the
spokesman said. We're still waiting...
At the UN, from Casamance to Transdniestria, Kosovans to Lezgines,
Micro-States as Powerful's Playthings
Byline: Matthew Russell Lee at the UN
UNITED NATIONS, August 25 -- Because they are so often forgotten,
today's report is micro-states. The thread ran through UN
Headquarters on Friday, from noon briefing to stakeout to UNCA Club
upstairs. Kofi Annan's spokesman on his way to the podium stopped to
tell Inner City Press not to ask certain questions. Some involved the
housing subsidy story below, one involved the Casamance region of
Senegal, where fighting is raging and refugees flee.
Thursday Inner City Press had asked who in the UN, other than the
refugee agency UNHCR, was addressing Casamance. Friday the spokesman
whispered, "On Casamance I don't have anything more than when UNHCR
has said." So instead Inner City Press asked about a seminal
micro-state, Kosovo. At a press conference hours earlier in Pristina,
the UN's mediator Martii Ahtisaari had announced that no package will
be put before the Security Council in September. Inner City Press
asked, but what of the postponed municipal elections? Video here, at
Minute 29.
The spokesman's office arranged a conference call to
UNMIK in Pristina, where the acting press chief said no elections can
be held in the winter anyway. The OSCE, he said, estimates that to
schedule elections takes at least six months. So much for local
democracy, even in areas run by the UN. Kofi Annan's incoming envoy
to Kosovo should have a better answer. We'll see. Other data the
spokesman belated provided on Friday is being analyzed.
The micro-states theory is that if Kosovo becomes fully
independent, the same will happen -- or be called for by Russia -- in
Abkhazia and South Ossetia, in Transdniestria and even Ajara in
Georgia. From this list we can drill down even keeper. Inner City
Press asked Kazakh Ambassador Yerzhan Kazykhanov about a civil
disturbance earlier in the week in Aktau on the Caspian coast,
involving attacks on immigrants from the striving micro-state of
Chechnya, on Azeris and the little-known Lezgines, who come from
Dagestan.
"There are many groups," the Kazakh Ambassador said, adding that
his recent flight from Almaty to Aqtobe took nearly four hours. On
the map he pointed at Oral and noted that World War II passed
through. In his prepared remarks, Kazakhstan's Ambassador stressed,
not without reason, that the "closure of the Semipalatinsk testing
site was one of the most significant events in the field of nuclear
disarmament." Asked about Kazakhstan's joint anti-terror operations
with China in Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, like Chechnya
another potential micro-state blocked by one of the Permanent Five on
the UN Security Council, the Kazakh Ambassador assured that the
fighting of terror has nothing to do with refugees. We'll see.
Slovakian limbo per UNHCR
But back to the micro-state of Casamance, which was part
of what's now Guinea-Bissau until France took it. The civil strife
dates back at least to 1982, and yet the UN and Security Council do
nothing about it. At a stakeout interview on Friday afternoon, Inner
City Press asked the Council's president Nana Effah-Apenteng if
Casamance is on his radar. No, the Ghanaian Ambassador replied.
"Maybe you are more up-to-date on this issue than I am." Video here,
at Minute 8:47. A well placed source upstairs at the UN noted that
Senegal keeps it quiet. As Chechnya is to Russia, in a sense,
Casamance is to Senegal. Ah, the micro-states...
At deadline in Conference Room 3 in the basement, the disability
rights convention was being endlessly discussed. Ten days ago the
chairman of the Ad Hoc Committee on the Convention, Don MacKay, said
that if current efforts to block the creation of a treaty monitoring
body are successful, the Convention may well not be enacted. "And
that would be shabby treatment," Mr. MacKay said, citing a long
history of societies' discrimination against the disabled.
Click here for video and here for the text of the draft Convention.
Inner City Press asked if the United States is among the
countries opposing any monitoring of countries' performance under the
Convention, similar to the approach the U.S. took in derailing the
Small Arms meeting at the UN earlier this year. Mr. MacKay
acknowledged that the U.S. is among six or seven countries raising
such concerns, but stated that the U.S. position does not seem
"doctrinal" or doctrinaire.
The afternoon the conference would wrap up, the UN briefer Thomas
Schindlmayr resisted naming the countries opposed for example to the
reference to countries' occupation. One journalist loudly left the
room. Later this list became clear, including the U.S., Australia,
Israel. And at 7:52 p.m., amid applause, the report was adopted.
http://www.innercitypress.com/unhq090706 .html