At the UN, Exclusions by Sarkozy and Ahmadinejad Trigger Questions

Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at the UN: News Analysis

UNITED NATIONS, September 26 -- Can member states hold private press conferences in the UN's briefing room? Can heads of state hold UN press conferences and explicitly refuse to respond to questions from reporters from particular countries? These questions were repeatedly raised on Wednesday, a day after Iran's president Mahmood Ahmadinejad refused to respond to Israeli questioners, and French president Nicolas Sarkozy excluded journalists without French passports from attending a briefing in Room 226 of UN Headquarters. Inner City Press' story about the exclusion was picked up in France and in blogs. On Wednesday before noon, Inner City Press asked the UN's Kiyo Akasaka, who to his credit said he would be complaining to the French. The issue of allowing many in, but refusing to respond to some questions, was portrayed as harder to address. At Wednesday's noon briefing, UN Deputy Spokesperson Marie Okabe answered:

"on the press conference with the Iranian President, as I just mentioned, DPI is looking into that.  And in terms of the press conference referring to the French President, there’s just one thing I do have to say on that, which is that Missions often do briefings for their national press but those are not announced nor sponsored by the Spokesperson’s Office.  Briefings on the official press conference schedule are meant to be open to all accredited journalists.  The French Mission should not have asked us to put the press conference on our public schedule."

            But can the French mission then take over the UN's briefing room, displacing also UN Security and its Media Accreditation and Liaison Unit, MALU, which in all other circumstances has a representative limiting access to the briefing room to reporters and members of the mission giving the briefing?

Ms. Goldwasser being ousted, per Ynetnews

            This last function fell apart during the Mahmood Ahmadinejad press conference on Tuesday, when for example Carlit Goldwasser was allowed to enter with a "Israel Diplomat" i.d. card. As we've reported, few can blame Ms. Goldwasser for wanting to raise the question of her husband, hostage for more than a year in south Lebanon. But who let her in? And now some ask, by what procedure was she physically removed? These questions don't go away -- we'll be here, at least for now, to cover them. Watch this site.

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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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