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As Blinken and Austen Head East Burma Sure To Come Up But China Bribes At UN Less So

By Matthew Russell Lee, Patreon
BBC - Guardian UK - Honduras - ESPN

SDNY / UN GATE, March 12 – In advance of the Japan and South Korea trip by US Secretaries of State and Defense Antony Blinken and Lloyd J. Austin, an embargoed press call was held. Inner City Press was disappointed but not surprised the China's dominance including at the UN barely came up. But Burma / Myanmar did.

  A senior US official said "the plight of the Burmese people in Burma" would surely be discussed with the US' partners. The official declined to answer on the Anchorage sessions with China.

While during the call a read-out of Blinken's call the day before with UNSG Antonio Guterres was issued, the issue of Guterres' links with the China Energy Fund Committee as he seeks a second term was UNtouched. For now.

 Notably, the only mention of the "United Nations" on the call was a reference to, in Korea, the "United Nations Command" - which is not really a UN body. No oversight.

Meanwhile the US Mission has yet to circulate the letters and CVs of challenges to Guterres. We'll have more on this, and on the Secretaries' trip.

 In the UN, from which Guterres still has Inner City Press banned, after the Burma coup regime fired its New York-based UN ambassador U Kyaw Moe Tun for his speech in New York in the usually scripted UN General Assembly, PGA President Volkan Bozkir, who in fine Myanmar fashion refuses to even name the authors of the letters and CVs of opponents to Guterres, bragged about the session.

  Now after Guterres and his spokespeople dodged about who is Burma's ambassador -- eager to get China's support for a second term, taking the US for granted -- this from the US Mission: "Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield met virtually this afternoon with Ambassador Kyaw Moe Tun, Permanent Representative of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar to the UN. Ambassador Thomas-Greenfield commended Ambassador Kyaw Moe Tun for his courageous and compassionate statement at the UN General Assembly informal meeting on Burma last week and expressed the United States’ support for the people of Burma and the restoration of the democratically-elected government."

  Dujarric, while taking public money to work for the UN, says he is the spokesman for the incumbent, like part of a political campaign. We'll have more on this.

  The United Kingdom as President of the UNSC for February, now virtue signaling, did not even push to have the February meeting on Burma be open, and UK Ambassador Barbara Woodward on February 1 banned the Press - which was given access to Tuesday's background briefing - from her UN "press" conference (at which not a single question on Africa, for example, was taken).

 At the February 2 US State Department briefing, Spokesman Ned Price said, "When it comes to Burma, look, I don’t think the military takeover, the military coup, is in the interest – it’s certainly not in our interest.  It’s certainly not in the interest of our likeminded partners.  I think you will also find that it’s not in the interest of the Chinese.  So our first concern, of course, is the restoration of civilian leadership in Burma.  Our concern, consistent with that, is ensuring that as we undertake this review, now that we have determined that a coup has taken place on February 1st, the civilian-led government has been deposed by the military – our first concern as we do that review will be to ensure that of the $135 million we contribute annually to the people of Burma, that we don’t do anything that would affect the long-suffering people of Burma, including the Rohingya in this case." Inner City Press will have more on this.

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