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At UN, Forced Happy Talk on Afghanistan, Two
Officials Still Excluded, Not P.C. to Raise
Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of
Inner City Press at the UN: News Analysis
UNITED NATIONS,
October 14 -- At the Afghanistan
debate of the UN Security Council on Tuesday, both the country's
Ambassador and
the UN's envoy called for caution in how the conflict is presented. Permanent Representative Zahir Tanin told the
Council, and then the Press, to be careful how they talk about
Afghanistan.
Inner City Press asked him to specify what he meant, to whom -- the
media? The
UN, given reports
that maps of danger levels are now being suppressed?
Video here,
from Minute 9:50.
"We
are not here to tell the press how to report or not," he said. "But
we can tell our friends and partners how the wrong debate can effect
things in
Afghanistan." This "wrong debate," his view appears to be, is
anything that presents the country as dangerous, the differences as
stark.
How then
must he have viewed UN Envoy Kai Eide's recent statement that the conflict
in
Afghanistan cannot be won militarily?
Amb. Zahir Tanin on Tuesday, PNG-ed British officials not shown
Kai Eide may have been read the riot act, because on Tuesday he was
saying to accentuate the positive. Inner City Press asked him about the
UN and
EU officials who were thrown out of the country by President Hamid
Karzai,
Mervin Patterson and Michael Semple. Are
they still out of the country?
Yes. Has Mr. Eide raised the issue with the Karzai administration, to
get them
back in? Eide said he has raised the issue, but "not in that sense."
Video here,
from 10:02. How, then?
Footnote: Present
at the stakeout was the reporter
from Arianna Television who previously got U.S. Ambassador Zalmay
Khalilzad to
muse about running from President of Afghanistan. This time, Khalilzad
did not
come to the stakeout. Such a run might
send Karzai back to his brother's restuarant in Baltimore, called
Helmand.
Click here for the menu
of Hamid Karzai's brother.
Note: Catch
this reporter on
Icelandic television, www.ruv.is
Watch this site, and this Oct. 2 debate, on
UN, bailout, MDGs.
* * *
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
Feedback: Editorial
[at] innercitypress.com
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Other,
earlier Inner City Press are listed here, and some are available
in the ProQuest service, and now on Lexis-Nexis.
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