At
UN
After Only
Partial $5.2 B
Budget Deal,
Torsella
Strides In,
R2P & SPMs
on Table
By
Matthew
Russell Lee
UNITED
NATIONS,
December 23 --
Following some
euphoria among
UN budget
diplomats
about the partial $5.2
billion deal,
fighting
continued
Friday night
about the
Special
Political
Missions.
Cuts
were proposed
to, among
others, the
United Nations
Integrated
Peace-building
Office
in Sierra
Leone,
Guinea-Bissau,
the Central
African
Republic and
the
Cameroon
Nigeria Mixed
Commission.
Boiling
under the
surface was
continued
opposition
from some
quarters to
the
implementation
and stealth
funding of the
UN's
"Responsibility
to Protect"
office,
slammed in one
draft "the
utilization
of budgetary
documents to
promote the
adoption
and/or
implementation
of concepts
which have not
been endorsed
by the General
Assembly or
are still
under its
consideration."
At
7:35 pm on
Friday, four
and a half
hours after
the start of
theGA session
at
which the
budget was
scheduled to
be voted on,
US Ambassador
for
Management Joe
Torsella
strode onto
the second
floor of the
UN's
North Lawn
building. He
greeted Inner
City Press
then sat down
to
speed read
documents.
Half
an hour later
Maged
Abdelaziz,
Egypt's
Permanent
Representative
under Mubarak
and
since,
arrived, a
major player
in the Group
of 77 and
China. It is
from these
quarters that,
for example,
skepticism
about R2P
comes,
even more so
after its
citation
during NATO's
bombing of
Libya.
UN
North Lawn at
night, takeout
food on
Christmas Eve?
(c) MRLee
Some
wonder about
Torsella's
claims of
reform and
improvement of
the UN. Is it
just
about
cost-cutting
(or this year,
the deferral
of
"re-costing"),
or does it
also relate to
the Special
Political
Missions and
concepts
like the
Responsibility
to Protect?
Watch this
site.
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