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At UN, Juul Memo Triggers Scramble for Posts, Nixon-like Defenses on Malaysia's Day - and WaPo on Power

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, August 31, updated -- Diplomatic circles at the UN in New York still reverberate with the leaked critique of Secretary General Ban Ki-moon signed by Norway's deputy ambassador Mona Juul. While the truth of most of the critiques is hard for all but the most fervent Ban supporters to deny, speculation continues to center on who leaked it, why it was leaked and relatedly what the memo and its leak might accomplish.

  A cross section of Ambassadors offered their views to Inner City Press on Monday. A South Asian Permanent Representative, relatively new on the UN scene but already a presence, opined that "the perceived weakness" of Mr. Ban is being used to "try to grab spoils," which in the UN is to say, posts.

   He characterized as "old news" the portion of Juul's memo which has the UK's John Holmes taking over the chief of staff spot from Vijay Nambiar. Others say that by year's end, Nambiar will be handed another UN post, presumably at the Under Secretary General level, perhaps like Jean Maurice Ripert. On that, there is curiosity of where Ban created Ripert's USG post from, without approval from the Fifth (Budget) Committee. Was the still vacant Office of the Special Adviser on Africa USG post being used?

   Another Ambassador from an ASEAN country said that portion of the memo "can't be good for Nambiar," adding that a perceived need is for someone to tell Ban "what he needs to hear, and not want he wants to hear." Another opined that the one UN Special Representative praised in Juul's memo, her countryman Kai Eide at the UN Mission in Afghanistan, was in fact hurt by the inclusion of his name.

   A Ban supporter, from a country which should be obvious, blamed the leak on internal Norwegian politics, the opposition versus the party in power, with Mona Juul somehow involved. He reminded, as others did, that Juul has sought but not gotten an ASG post from Ban. He dismissed the importance of Ban not being allowed by Than Shwe to meet with Aung San Suu Kyi, saying that the UN's goal in Myanmar is democratization, a goal "larger than Suu Kyi." Even he offered no defense of Ban's performance on Sri Lanka.

   Online, an almost laughable defense of Ban has been published in the Korea Times, concluding that "if you sincerely support the United Nations and care about its future, why not get behind Ban and watch his back... undermining Ban with corrosively poisonous criticism could set in motion an acidic chemistry that winds up eating away at the United Nations itself."

   But when those who were critical of Richard Nixon, for example, were accused of thereby undermining the U.S., many of them replied that it was precisely because they were patriots that they opposed what Nixon was doing.


UN's Ban and the Norwegians, Juul memo echoes in NY not shown

  Those interviewed by Inner City Press include some major supporters of the UN, including Ambassadors of small countries which need or want a strong UN. Without of course equating Ban Ki-moon and Nixon, if the defense of Ban is that a critique of him is a critique of the UN, that is lame.

Footnotes: at the celebration of Malaysia's national day on August 31 at that country's mission, the squid was spicy and the mango juice was cold. Deputy Secretary General Asha Rose Migiro appeared, and left by limo with the ubiquitous Parfait. The U.S., it seemed, was represented at the level of DPR, the level of Mona Juul. It was said that there will be no Qaddafi tent at all, only a hotel room like the other leaders attending. South Korea's president will be coming to the General Assembly, and to the G-20 meeting in Pittsburgh. India's Prime Minister, it seems, will attend only the G-20, followed by a visit to Washington in October.

  Some small countries complained of perceived mistreatment by UN Protocol, and of what they called the pro big country bias of Ban's September 22 climate change event. The Malaysians were nothing but gracious, and barbecued satays on the patio behind their mission. As the weather cools down, the UN is about to heat up. Watch this site.

Media watch post script -- a few hours after the publication of the above, the Washington Post's long awaited "Ban piece" went online, pegged to Ban's push back against a Juul memo question in Oslo earlier on Monday. While there's more to say, for now we note the crafty reference to Samantha Power, as having criticized Ban before joining the Obama administration. Various Ban defenders, we will now with this peg report, have pointed the finger at Samantha Power as the source of the leak of the Juul memo, how ever wild such pointing may appear. (Inner City Press even referred obliquely to this theory in an earlier piece, saying that blame was being case on one who accompanied U.S. Ambassador to meet with Ban last week. It was Samantha Power, not listed on Ban's schedule but visible to those watching the feed of the photo op on UN TV.

Unrelated to the WaPo piece, various and sundry in the UN orbit muse that if Obama gets a second term - which in any event seems more likely than a Ban second term, insert Las Vegas odds here - and Susan Rice ascends to Secretary of State, Ban critic Samantha Power might surface as U.S. Ambassador to the UN. Watch this site.

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At UN, Norway's Trashing of Ban Stirs Rumors of Endgame: Full Text

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, August 20 -- The indictment of the administration of the UN by Ban Ki-moon signed by Norway's deputy ambassador Mona Juul [full text below] gathered strength and supporters on Thursday. Inner City Press asked Ban's deputy spokesperson Marie Okabe on August 19 for Ban's view of Juul's memo and "how does it impact his planned trip to Norway at the end of this month?"

   Ms. Okabe answered that "We do not know the veracity of the reports to which you refer... we have not announced the Secretary-General’s next travel plans." Transcript here.

    Thursday it emerged that the plan had been to announced Ban's Norway trip on August 19, but that the announcement was pulled back in the face of news of and questions about the Juul memo. Inner City Press has interviewed two senior Ban administration officials, both of whom acknowledge that Juul's critique is devastating, even debilitating.

   Norway is a big donor, one of them said, noting that Sudan, on the other end of the spectrum, has also protested Ban. "Who will stand up for him?" the other official asked rhetorically. Of the reheated rumors in the memo, including that top humanitarian John Holmes might replace Vijay Nambiar as Ban's chief of staff, as Inner City Press has previously predicted, the official said that Holmes might do a better job. But India, then, would need another post.

  The Ban administration officials both said that a new communications strategy is needed. They speculated who will takeover as spokesperson in November. While one has been predicting another outsider from Newsweek, the better placed official now predicts a French speaker from within the Outreach Division of the Department of Public Information. It's been a disaster, both conceded, of recent and reduced UN noon briefings.

  Things are actually worse that Juul presents them, in that her memo does not touch on the brewing nepotism and corruption scandals at the UN.

    Several under-reported aspect of Juul's memo are eye catching: her description of Deputy Secretary General Migiro's limited scope of responsibility, her diplomatic dismissal of Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann as a "rather special President of the General Assembly."  She hits Ban even on his signature issue, climate change. Juul describes "a culture of decision-making which is marked by information both up and down the system being filtered by the omnipresent assistant chief of cabinet Kim" Won-soo.

  Self- (or Norway-) servingly, Juul wrote that "Ban has consistently chosen special representatives and leaders in the Secretariat who don’t distinguish themselves, except for the case of Afghanistan" -- the SRSG is Norwegian, Kai Eide. One wonders why Juul didn't in the memo praise her husband, USG Terje Roed Larsen.

  Also ill-informed was Juul's quip that "As a woman from that part of the world, [UNDP's Helen ] Clark could quickly become a competitor for Ban’s second period." New Zealand may geographically be in Asia, but politically at the UN it is part of the WEOG (Western European and Other Group). More likely is the scenario first laid out by Inner City Press, that China in exchange for getting to head the World Bank in 2012 allows another group -- possible WEOG or an Eastern European -- to take over the UN Secretary General's post. Click here for that Inner City Press exclusive; see below for full text of Juul. Watch this site.


Team Ban on 38 last month, Mona Juul not shown

  The Juul memo, translated by the "Group of Friend on Inner City Press," is below:

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moons fruitless visit to Burma at the beginning of July was emblematic of a Secretary-General and an organization that is struggling to show leadership. At a time where the UN and the need for multilateral solutions to global crises is more necessary than ever, Ban and the UN are conspicuous by their absence. In the last half-year, follow-up to the many crises that dominated last fall’s General Assembly should have brought the Secretary-General and the UN fully into the fray, but the opposite seems to have occurred.

In relation to the financial crisis, neither the Secretary-General nor the General Assembly – despite the major meeting on the financial crisis at the end of June – have distinguished themselves as the most important arena for discussion, and the vacuum has been filled by the G-20 and other actors. Ban's voice on behalf of the G-192 and the poor has hardly [there’s a misspelling in the original; “kapt” is not a word but “knapt” means “hardly”] registered. An at times invisible Secretary-General in combination with a rather special President of the General Assembly has gone far to sideline the UN, and the organization hasn’t realized its limits. On the environment/energy area the UN is also struggling to be relevant, despite the planned high-level meeting on climate change at the opening of the General Assembly this fall. Even though the Secretary-General to the point of boredom repeats that Copenhagen is supposed to “seal the deal,” there is widespread worry that the UN-high-level meeting won’t contribute notably to the process leading up to Copenhagen.

In the many political/security crises around the world, the Secretary-General’s leadership and ability to deliver on behalf of the UN is still being sought. Burma is a shining example of this. There was no lack of warning that the Secretary-General shouldn’t go at this time. The Americans were among the most doubtful to his trip, but the British thought he should go. Special Representative Gambari was initially also doubtful, but Ban insisted. Gambari pointed to the fact that recent negative press coverage (headlines like “Whereabouts unknown in The Times and “Nowwhere Man [sic]” in Foreign Policy) had made Ban even more set on visiting Burma. After an apparently fruitless visit by the Secretary-General, the UN’s “good offices” will become even more problematic. Special Representative Gambari will have big problems continuing after “the top man” has failed and the generals in Yangoon [sic] no longer want to meet him.

Another example of weak handling from the Secretary-General’s side is the war in Sri Lanka. The Secretary-General was a powerless observer to civilians in their thousands losing their lives and being driven from their homes. The authorities in Colombo refused to receive the Secretary-General while the war was going on, but he was an honored guest -- and he accepted the invitation -- once the war had been “won.” Even though the UN’s humanitarian effort had been active and honorable enough, the Secretary-General’s moral voice and authority have been absent.

Also in other “crisis areas,” for example Darfur, Somalia, Pakistan, Zimbabwe and not least Congo, the Secretary-General’s passive and not very committed appeals seem to fall on deaf ears. Many would also claim that the handling of the inquiry commission after the war in Gaza ended up with an unsteady and too-careful follow-up.

More surprisingly, and therefore more disappointingly, Ban Ki-moon has been almost absent on the disarmament and non-proliferation area. This was a field he himself presented as one of his priority areas before he started his post. The reorganization of the department of disarmament to an office directly answerable to the Secretary-General, led by a High Representative indicated a big stake in this area, also given the Secretary-General’s own background on the Korean peninsula. With a new nonproliferation treaty review in 2010 and an American administration which has put the team much higher on the agenda, it’s cause for concern that the Secretary-General isn’t more committed.

The common thread in all these cases is that an unclear Secretary-General with a lack of charisma is not compensated for by high-profile and visible colleagues. Ban has consistently chosen special representatives and leaders in the Secretariat who don’t distinguish themselves, except for the case of Afghanistan. Furthermore, he seems to prefer to be in the center himself, without competition from his colleagues, and lets it shine through pretty clearly that commenting to the media is a privilege belonging to himself. The result is that the UN becomes a less visible and relevant player in areas where it would have been natural and necessary for an active UN-engagement. A notable exception is the selection of Helen Clark as the new leader for UNDP. She has in her short time on the job shown promise. It will be interesting to follow if she is given room to distinguish the UN’s development side. As a woman from that part of the world, Clark could quickly become a competitor for Ban’s second period.

It was common knowledge that it was a conscious choice [NB! The Norwegian word “bevist” which is written here means “proven,” but in this context it appears to be a misspelling of the word “bevisst” meaning “conscious.”] from the then-current American administration that an activist Secretary-General was not wanted. The new American administration hasn’t yet signaled any change in their attitude to Ban, even though there are rumors that some people in Washington are now referring to Ban as “a one-term SG”. It’s said that the people around both Susan Rice and Hillary Clinton are very negative to Ban, but the two are yet to speak on the matter. China is probably pretty happy with him and it’s primarily China which holds the key to whether Ban will be renewed for a second term. Russia has for a long time been dissatisfied with the Secretary-General both in terms of his handling of Kosovo and Georgia, but also because of a lack of recruitment of Russians to important positions. At the same time, Russia is well served by a Secretary-General who isn’t too interventionist.

Among the remainder of the member states one notices that the perception of Ban at the midway point is growing steadily more negative. Among the many who thought he should be given some more time, that everything would get better once he warmed up, and that the comparison to his predecessor’s charisma was unfair, the tune is now that the beginner’s goodwill [direct translation: “learning potential”] appears to be spent and that a lack of charisma is actually a problem. The Secretary-General seems to function well enough when he sticks to the script, and shows up to a lot of meetings and other events. The problem arises when he’s “on his own” where he can’t manage to set the agenda, create enthusiasm and show leadership – not internally either. Ban’s lack of engagement and lack of interest in mastering the issues means that he doesn’t become an effective player or negotiator in the many conflict situations he is expected to handle.

The mood at “the house” is still characterized as not very motivated, with a culture of decision-making which is marked by information both up and down the system being filtered by the omnipresent assistant chief of cabinet Kim. After recent negative media stories about the Secretary-General, the mood on the 38th floor is said to be pretty tense. Ban has constant temper tantrums [direct translation: outbreaks of rage] which even levelheaded [the Norwegian word “sindig” is untranslatable and describes a quality of being capable and calm as well as having common sense] and experienced colleagues have trouble handling. The relationship with next-in-command Migiro is as strained and her sphere of action appears to have shrunk even further. There are constant rumors of replacements and switch-overs. In addition to rumors that Migiro is on her way out, it’s rumored that OCHA-boss Holms [sic], who is roundly praised, is taking over as Chef de Cabinet, and that Nambiar is quitting. The same is said about the head of the political department, Pascoe, and that Holms [sic] is also a candidate to taking over his job. The British are probably still very concerned about getting that post back. These are, however, only rumors and most probably, Ban will continue with the same crew – at least ‘till the end of this year. If that’s good enough for a second term only time will tell.


UN's Ban Slammed by Norway's Juul, on Burma and Sri Lanka Trips, Should Oslo Be Canceled?

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, August 19 -- As UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon returned to New York after ten days in South Korea, soon to turn around and visit Norway by the end of the month, he was confronted by an embarrassing leak in the Norwegian foreign ministry of Deputy Permanent Representative Mona Juul's unflattering assessment of his "failed" trips to Myanmar and Sri Lanka, his flying into rages and ineffective leadership.

  That Ms. Juul is also the spouse of Ban's Under Secretary General Terje Roed Larsen makes the criticism all the more telling. What will Ban Ki-moon do?

   While Ban was in South Korea, a month after Myanmar's Senior General Than Shwe refused to allow him a meeting or photo op with democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, precisely such a visit was allowed to U.S. Senator Jim Webb. When Ban's Deputy Spokesperson Marie Okabe was asked by Inner City Press and others if Ban had any comment on Webb's more successful visit -- he also left the country with another Suu Kyi visitor, John Yettaw, freeing him from seven years of hard labor -- Ms. Okabe tersely said no, no comment. Later her Office issued a "response to questions at the noon briefing" begrudgingly acknowledging the Webb visit.


At UN, Mona Juul (at left), Ban and trips not shown

  Ban's record on Sri Lanka has gotten even worse. During his visit in late May, he smiled as Tamil children imprisoned by the government in UN funded camps at Manik Farms were forced to sing his name. Now, those camps have become flooded, including with raw sewage. The government blames the UN, and Ban's UN has said nothing.

  What is the purpose of Ban's planned August 31 visit to Norway? Should it not now be called off, and Team Ban get back to their actual mending work -- including addressing the proliferating nepotism and corrupt hiring scandals -- at the UN?

Inner City Press' June 18 debate on Sri Lanka, click here

 Channel 4 in the UK with allegations of rape and disappearance

  Click here for an Inner City Press YouTube channel video, mostly UN Headquarters footage, about civilian deaths in Sri Lanka.

Click here for Inner City Press' March 27 UN debate

Click here for Inner City Press March 12 UN (and AIG bailout) debate

Click here for Inner City Press' Feb 26 UN debate

Click here for Feb. 12 debate on Sri Lanka http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/17772?in=11:33&out=32:56

Click here for Inner City Press' Jan. 16, 2009 debate about Gaza

Click here for Inner City Press' review-of-2008 UN Top Ten debate

Click here for Inner City Press' December 24 debate on UN budget, Niger

Click here from Inner City Press' December 12 debate on UN double standards

Click here for Inner City Press' November 25 debate on Somalia, politics

and this October 17 debate, on Security Council and Obama and the UN.

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These reports are usually also available through Google News and on Lexis-Nexis.

Click here for a Reuters AlertNet piece by this correspondent about Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army. Click here for an earlier Reuters AlertNet piece about the Somali National Reconciliation Congress, and the UN's $200,000 contribution from an undefined trust fund.  Video Analysis here

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