Inner City Press -- Investigative Reporting From the Inner City to Wall Street to the United Nations

At UN, Obama Goes Soft on Bahrain, Ignores Darfur, Uses Sudan to Blunt Palestine Critique

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, September 21 -- A week before US President Obama's yearly UN speech, Inner City Press asked his Ambassador Susan Rice what he thought and would do about Sudan, specifically the killing of civilians in Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile State, as well as in Darfur.

  Rice said the Administration is very concerned. But when Obama on Wednesday delivered his 27 minute speech -- 12 minutes over the limit that had been set -- his three mentions of the word Sudan were only in the context of the success of the South Sudan referendum, and then only to argue that the US really does want there to be a Palestinian state.

  Obama focused on what's called the Arab Spring, but highly selectively. He went out of his way to praise Bahrain for reforms, even as killing continues there, with a Saudi military presence.

 The night before the speech, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met for more than an hour with Saudi Arabia's foreign minister, with whom UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon says he didn't even discuss Bahrain.

  Obama bragged that "we've banned" human rights abusers from traveling to the US, without mentioning the obvious, that this does not apply to the UN and the meeting he was speaking at.

Obama previously with PGA & frmr Gaddafi FM Treki

 Just as one example, despite petitions to the President of the General Assembly, Mahinda Rajapaksa the President of Sri Lanka which is charged, even by a UN report, with war crimes, has traveled to New York. He met with Bill Clinton a few blocks to the west.

  Traveling with Obama is his "Genocide is a Problem from Hell" adviser Samantha Power -- but there was no mention of war crimes in Southern Kordofan in the speech, much less the need for accountability in Sri Lanka.

  It was, more than one listening concluded, a campaign speech. But Obama can't get re-elected in the UN -- and might not be, if he vetoes a request in the Security Council by the Palestinians for UN membership. Trying to avoid that request seems the theme of his trip. Watch this site.

Footnote: Beyond the speech, of course, the test is what the US actually does at UN going forward. We'll be watch -- as we note that the American head of the UN Department of Political Affairs Lynn Pascoe was, perhaps to his credit, not watching the Obama speech even on UN TV, as during it he walked around the North Lawn Building's second floor.

 French chiefs of UN Peacekeeping -- there have been four in a row -- wouldn't do that while Nicolas Sarkozy spoke. This too is perhaps to the US' credit.