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At UN Group on Pirates Meets, Surrender is Advised,
Somalia Abandoned
Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of
Inner City Press at the UN: News Analysis
UNITED NATIONS,
January 14 -- Days after a $3
million ransom was parachuted to Somali
pirates on a Saudi oil tanker, the UN on
Wednesday hosted the inaugural meeting of the Contact Group on Somali
Piracy. The
Group issued a statement instruction ships' crews to, among other
things,
"remain calm and cooperate with the pirates" until rescued, and then
"be
prepared to answer questions on identity and status onboard." Chairing
the
meeting and Group, from the US State Department, was Mark T. Kimmitt,
previously a US spokesman in Iraq and most
recently noted in a heavily-redacted
memo by the Defense Department's Inspector
General. Click here
for that memo.
At the
same time as the US claims leadership of the anti-pirate fight, it has
tabled a
resolution putting off decision on a peacekeeping mission to war-torn
mainland
Somalia until June 2009. As
Inner City
Press reported at year's end, the US backed down to the UK and its pessimism
on Somalia, and veered
from public statements by Condi Rice about the urgency of a UN
peacekeeping
mission.
US' Kimmitt meet Iraq journalists, shoes in flight not shown
In fact,
even the UN's strategy in Somalia has been Americanized. UN envoy Ahmedou
Ould-Abdallah has called for the construction in
Mogadishu of a
UN headquarters that is Green Zone-like, a reference to the US' use of
Saddan
Hussein's guarded compounded after he was overthrown in Iraq. In
Somalia,
however, no such safe zone exists. Whether given the financial crisis
of
members states and the UN, it seems unlikely any Mogadishu Green Zone
will be
built.
Even on the
peacekeeping mission, Ambassador Takasu of Japan, now as before a
Security
Council member, told Inner City Press his country feels that Somalia is
not
ready for a UN peacekeeping mission, there is no peace to keep.
And so the
world's commitment to Somalia is essentially containment. It hasn't
worked so
far.
Click here for Inner City Press'
review-of-2008 UN Top Ten debate
Click here for Inner
City Press' December 24 debate on UN budget, Niger
Click here from Inner City Press'
December 12 debate on UN double standards
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
Feedback: Editorial
[at] innercitypress.com
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USA
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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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2006-08 Inner City Press, Inc. To request
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