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UN Peacekeeping Ripped by Ramsey
Clark and Congo Doctor, Even HRW's Roth
Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of
Inner City Press at the UN: News Analysis
UNITED NATIONS,
December 10 -- An unlikely pairing
of Ramsey Clark and Ken Roth, the director of Human Rights Watch, both
criticized
UN Peacekeeping on Wednesday, as they both collected the UN Prize in
the Field
of Human Rights. Inner City Press asked Roth and another prize winner,
Doctor Denis
Mukwege who repairs raped women in Eastern Congo, about Western powers'
indecision over whether to send peacekeepers there. Doctor Mukwege said
the
17,000 troops
currently there should have been able to stop the abuses of the 6,000
FDLR
Interhamwe in the area, but have not.
Inner City
Press asked Ramsey Clark for his views on more aggressive UN
Peacekeeping in
the Congo and Darfur. Clark replied by describing the UN Mission in
Haiti,
MINUSTAH, as soldiers from 15 countries who do not coordinate with each
other
or with UN headquarters in New York.
While Clark
did not answer Inner City Press'
question if he would represent Sudanese president Omar al Bashir if he
is
indicted, he said that five million people have died in the Congo due
to the
lack of interest of Western powers, who nevertheless focus on what
Clark called
the 200,000 dead in Darfur in Sudan. To
some, this sounded like an answer, to others, an offer of
representation.
Ramsey Clark takes human rights prize from
UN's Brockmann, Srebrenica not shown
Earlier on
Wednesday at the Nigerian Mission, that country's Permanent
Representative Joy
Ogwu said that she hopes that no arrest warrant is issued for Bashir,
who
she
described as acting better, "much better," of late. Asked if Nigeria
would enforce an arrest warrant, she did not give a direct answer.
HRW's Ken
Roth in his opening remarks about the Congo criticized what he called
the three
countries best equipped to go into the Kivus: France, the UK and
Germany. Inner
City Press asked why he had not even bothered to mention the U.S. Roth agreed, saying it is sad one does not
even think of the U.S. for peacekeeping any more. He said that among
the
victims of the war in Iraq are people left unprotected in Sudan, the
Congo and
Somalia. This implies that the U.S. would have participated in those UN
Missions but for occupying Iraq and Afghanistan.
But as left
unaddressed by Madeleine Albright earlier this week, the U.S. did not
act in
Rwanda during the 1994 genocide either. It goes back to the "Black
Hawk
Down" incident in Somalia. Ramsey Clark's views on that were not
available
at press time.
Footnote: As Inner
City Press first exclusively
reported on October 26, Ramsey Clark was selected earlier this year
by General Assembly
President Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann as one of his 15 special advisors. His spokesman was asked on Wednesday why
Clark hadn't earlier gotten this UN prize. Inner City Press asked if
d'Escoto
Brockmann's presidency this year had anything to do with the award.
Could it be
only a coincidence?
Click here for Inner
City Press' November 25 debate on Somalia, politics
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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[at] innercitypress.com
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