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In Congo, 3000 Troops But UN Still in White
Fortresses, France - Rwanda Rift Downplayed
Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of
Inner City Press at the UN: News Analysis
UNITED NATIONS,
November 20 -- As the UN Security
Council authorized 3000 more peacekeeping troops for the Congo, France
tried to
take a central role in an area it talks about a lot, the protection of
humanitarian workers. Inner City Press asked French Ambassador
Jean-Maurice
Ripert if his country's public disputes with Rwanda, most recently
about the
arrest of President Paul Kagame's advisor Rose Kabuye, doesn't
problematize
France's role in the region. No, Ripert said, insisting that France has
good
relations with Rwanda.
In fact,
Rwanda broke off diplomatic relations and is
threatening to indict former French official Dominique de Villepin and
others
for France's role in the 1994 genocide. If Rwanda is so central to the
conflict
in the Congo, as the UN admits by meeting with Kagame instead of the
Tutsi
rebel in the Congo, Laurent Nkunda, then France's rift with Kagame
should
preclude it from any central role.
Who then
will go to the Congo, and under what rules of engagement? Inner City
Press
asked Ripert to respond to the complaint of the UN's military commander
in
North Kivu that it is impossible to fight Nkunda's forces from bright
white
vehicle visible from kilometers away.
Ripert said to ask Alain Le Roy, the (French) head
of UN Peacekeeping,
while adding that the militarization of humanitarian assistance is
essential.
Thus are the phrases if not philosophy of Bernard Kouchner, the
self-declared inventor
of the Responsibility to Protect, present in the Council every day.
France's Ripert + 2, stylin' at the UN
While
Ripert spoke, no one was manning the microphones of UN Television.
Inner City
Press is told it is because there is a hiring freeze; the head of the
outside
contractor to whom the workers have been outsources recently had to
resign.
While the UN took and spent $25 million from the Spanish government,
including
from its International Cooperation budget, for a lavish ceiling in
Geneva
inaugurated this week by Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, they cannot
even afford
to have a soundman for the French and UK Ambassador to the UN, speaking
about
the Congo.
Not needing
a microphone or any amplification on Thursday was South African
Ambassador
Dumisani Kumalo, who loudly called out after Richard Stanley, the chair
of the
Stanley Foundation, who had just met with Ban Ki-moon. Stanley, a
somewhat
unexplained power behind the thrown at the UN, blurted out about the
responsibility to protect. Somewhere, under a lavish ceiling, even more
airy
invective was prepared. Meanwhile, civilians in the Congo are left to
wait
outside UN bases as the fighting re-heats up.
Click here for Inner City
Press Nov. 7 debate on the war in Congo
Watch this site, and this Oct. 2 debate, on
UN, bailout, MDGs
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
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