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On Sri Lanka, UN
Council "Waits for Nambiar," UK Says It's Listening, But...
Byline:
Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at the UN: News Analysis
UNITED
NATIONS,
April 21 -- With the Sri Lankan government's ultimatum deadline
having expired, the UN Security Council has still not heard from Ban
Ki-moon's envoy Vijay Nambiar. Tuesday morning in front of the
Council, Inner City Press asked Austrian Ambassador Thomas
Mayr-Harting when the briefing would take place. “This week,” he
said. “The issue is basically the timing, and the timing of Nambiar
himself.”
Moments later,
Inner City Press asked this month's Council president Claude Heller
of Mexico if there had been any movement on the issue since what he
told
the Press midday on Monday. “Not yet,” Ambassador Heller said.
“We are waiting for Nambiar to come.”
Nambiar left
Sri Lanka days ago, after President Mahinda Rajapakse and his two
brothers rebuffed a request for any pause in the military assault,
and reportedly told Nambiar not to attempt any contact with the LTTE.
Council sources say that Nambiar stopped in India on his way back,
and that it is not clear that this stop really had anything to do
with his Sri Lanka mandate. “Funny time for home leave,” one of
them remarked. Another said, once you travel all that way, why not?
Except for the timing.
Austria's Mayr-Harting,
France's Ripert, UK's Des Browne and Nambiar not shown
Meanwhile, the
UK Mission to the UN wishes to make clear that Gordon Brown's envoy
to Sri Lanka Des Browne, whom President Rajapakse rejected, has in
fact been trying to bring about an “urgent” briefing at the UN.
The UK Mission, from which a comment on the legality of Sri Lanka's
detention of UN staff is still awaited, sent Inner City Press this
statement from or about Des Browne, “in case the below is of
interest” --
Des
Browne MP, the UK Prime Minister's Special Envoy for Sri Lanka,
visited the United Nations headquarters in New York on 20 April. At
the conclusion of his visit, Mr Browne said:
"The
UK government, having made clear its deep concern at the
deteriorating humanitarian situation in north-eastern Sri Lanka,
strongly supports the work that the UN has been doing to try to
arrange a UN-assisted civilian evacuation from the conflict zone.
"As
the Secretary-General has said, UN staff must now be allowed into the
conflict zone to facilitate relief operations and the evacuation of
civilians.
"I
welcome reports that over the past three days substantial numbers of
civilians have escaped from the conflict zone. The UK will continue
to work with its international partners to try to secure an immediate
ceasefire to facilitate a civilian evacuation. I call on the LTTE to
allow civilians to leave.
"I
was reassured by my meetings here that the UN and our partners are
focused on the need to improve conditions in the IDP camps through
better access to medical facilities, transparent registration
processes, international monitoring, and freedom of movement in and
out of the camps. I urged them to provide UN supervision of the
reception arrangements for civilians as soon as they cross the front
line.
"All
Sri Lankans have an interest in peace and prosperity in their
country, and we will do what we can to help them achieve that goal.
It is clear from my meetings today with senior UN staff, governments
and NGOs that the voices of Tamil communities throughout the world
are being heard and understood."
That
communication is flowing as Browne's statement says it is is called
into a question by a British Tamils press release complaining that
the “British Government is yet to break its silence on the latest
massacre, the human cost of which is comparable to the total casualty
figures of the recent Gaza conflict.” Inner City Press has asked
the UK Mission for the chance to interview Des Browne.
Not only is
the UN's and Security Council's response to the “bloodbath on the
beach” in Sri Lanka strikingly less than to Gaza, Darfur, Georgia
or other recently conflicts -- even today April 21, there is at the
UN and in the Council much more focus on a bureaucratic meeting on
the North Korea sanctions committee than on Sri Lanka. Watch this
site.
Footnote:
We continue to wait for the
UK's formal answer to the first of the two
questions which Inner
City
Press asked the UK Mission to
the UN two questions on Sri Lanka early on April 15:
Does the UK
believe that international law and the
rights of UN humanitarian staff are being violated by the
now-acknowledged
detention of UN staff in the Sri Lankan government's “IDP” camps?
It has been reported
this morning that Sri Lanka's “minister also told the
British
Foreign Secretary that there was concern that the LTTE would
continue to
consolidate its fortification of the No-Fire Zone.” Please confirm the
accuracy
of that, and of this
and if so, does the UK interpret it as saying that
an offensive on the No-Fire Zone and the civilians in it will begin?
What did
the UK Foreign Secretary say?
As
of
this press time more than six days later, the formal answer has been
referral to Minister
Miliband's April 12
statement, and this.
As more answers arrive we will report them on this site.
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.
* * *
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
Feedback: Editorial
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