After Algiers Bombing, UN to Appoint Algerian Ex-Minister Lakhdar Brahimi to Investigate

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

UNITED NATIONS, January 31 -- In the wake of the bombing last month that killed UN staff in Algiers, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he would appoint an outside panel to investigate. The Algerian government protested, saying it had not been consulted. Ban and his chief of staff Vijay Nambiar both met with Algerian officials, and Thursday night Algerian diplomats said that the choice to head the UN panel is former Algerian foreign minister Lakhdar Brahimi.

            At the UN, some scoffed at such a choice as an accommodation which would call into question any independence of the panel. Others called it astute politics, given that Brahimi's previous study of peacekeeping made it likely that he will exonerate the UN system, too. UN Development Program Administrator Kemal Dervis, asked by Inner City Press about UNDP's Marc de Bernis' role in not having raised the threat assessment level after the April 2007 bomb attack in Algeria, said that the UN had in fact asked the Algerian government to help block off the street in front of the UN building, without any formal response.

  Algerian officials have fired back, including at a conference in Tunis on Thursday, when Algeria's interior minister Yazid Zerhouni spoke, in front of UN Security chief David Veness, of the need for "respect for the sovereignty of states... without interference in their internal affairs." Hours later, other Algerian diplomats named, first to Bloomberg News, Algerian Brahimi as the UN's "outside" investigator.

Lakhdar Brahimi - is he "a fox guarding the hen house," as one diplomat put it?

            David Veness, it should be said, was previously with Britain's Scotland Yard, for which he investigated without success the disappearance of three million dollars from UN custody in Somalia. Now Scotland Yard is providing the veneer of outside investigation to Pervez Musharraf's inquiry into the murder of his political rival Benazir Bhutto.  One wag at the UN Thursday night, at the end-of-Security-Council-presidency reception thrown by the Libyan mission, asked and answered a question. What is the difference between Pervez Musharraf and Ban Ki-moon? (A beat.) At least Pervez Musharraf has Scotland Yard.  To be continued.

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These reports are 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

  Because a number of Inner City Press' UN sources go out of their way to express commitment to serving the poor, and while it should be unnecessary, Inner City Press is compelled to conclude this installment in a necessarily-ongoing series by saluting the stated goals of the UN agencies and many of their staff. Keep those cards, letters and emails coming, and phone calls too, we apologize for any phone tag, but please continue trying, and keep the information flowing.

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