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UN Brags of $16 Billion for Poor, Takes Few
Questions on It, Snub-Gate II for Brown
Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of
Inner City Press at the UN: News Analysis
UNITED NATIONS,
September 25 -- Flanked by the UK's
Gordon Brown and Microsoft's Bill Gates, with the fourth seat of this
quarter,
for the the African Union's and Tanzania's President Kikwete, sitting
noticeably empty, Ban Ki-moon on Thursday night read out a summary of
what he
called $16 billion in commitments to the Millennium Development Goals. Following this read-out, after taking no
questions at his Wednesday afternoon press conference and cancelling a
Thursday
morning stakeout opportunity, Ban took a single question.
His
spokesperson
veered from the protocol that missions like Spain's and agencies like
UNICEF
use, and gave the lone Ban question to.. a diplomat from a country
under
military rule, an individual with a "D" and not a "P" on
their UN grounds pass. Perhaps this is the only way for Ban's
Spokesperson to
feel comfortable begrudgingly allowing a question: it must be from the
representative of dictatorship.
While press
questions were being limited, Inner City Press interviewed a
high-placed UN
official from the developing world, who asked for anonymity due to the
UN's
propensity to retaliate against whistleblower. The UN shouldn't
degenerate, as
it is now, into a charity pledging event, the official said, adding
that he
thought Kikwete's absence from behalf of the African Union, which left
this
culminating session with no African representation, was not by mistake
or
coincidence. Many development countries are frustrated, he said.
Brown and Ban on Sept. 25, Paulson and $700 billion
not shown
But these
countries, or at least their leaders, line up to meet corporate
chieftains. Witness,
for example, the event on Wednesday night on the UN's fourth floor
called
"Microsoft African Heads of State Reception." The AU was well
represented there, but not with Mr. Ban.
After the
truncated three-question press conference, several UN officials
acknowledged to
Inner City Press that the $16 billion figure is "strictly back of the
envelope," a rough estimate based on little more than pouring over
press
releases and General Assembly speeches. We'll
see.
Footnote: for the
second UN visit in a row, Gordon
Brown got caught up a snub-gate, this time with U.S. Treasury Secretary
Hank
Paulson. Back in April, the snubbing was by Thabo Mbeki, since out as
South African president; some say Brown will follow. People described
his look in UN halls as "embattled," with
his UN Ambassador John Sawers following him, Blackberry in hand. As the
final
Thursday press conference began, Brown's own press team told Ban's that
they
they "their" report in Mongolia's seat in Conference Room 4. One can
try to manage the Press but in the end it doesn't work.
Watch this site, and this Sept. 18 (UN) debate.
* * *
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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