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At UN, Mauritania's Coup Is Just "Corrective Change," Pre- and Post-Coup Ambassador Says

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

UNITED NATIONS, August 19 --  Mauritania's coup of August 6 was addressed by the UN Security Council 13 days after it took place. Surreally, the same Ambassador who represented the country pre-coup continued in his post, now praising the new powers and calling the coup a mere "corrective change."  This Ambassador, Abderrahim Ould Hadrami, gave a speech in the Council in which he said that up until the elections earlier this decade, Mauritania had been a dictatorship. But he himself represented what he admitted was a dictatorship, in Paris from 1977 to 1979 and to the United Nations in 1982.

   Inner City Press asked about freedom of the press, specifically about a journalist named Ahmed Ould Neda who was arrested for covering an anti-coup demonstration on August 7.  Abderrahim Ould Hadrami called that an "isolated case," adding that a demonstration by coup opponents will be allowed tomorrow, August 20. Video here. But last month saw the arrests of Mohamed Nema Omar the publisher of Al Houriya and of Mohamed Ould Abdelatif, a reporter for the paper, for their coverage of the courts in Mauritania. Will they be released?


Ban Ki-moon and Abderrahim Ould Hadrami, consistency not shown

  After this month's Council president Jan Grauls read out a Presidential Statement condemning the coup and calling for an immediate return to Constitutional order -- such as it was -- Inner City Press asked Ambassador Grauls how Mauritania could have the same Permanent Representative before and after the coup, and how he could call it a mere corrective change. Grauls laughed and said, "These diplomats find nice ways to say things. In Europe, no one loses their job, enterprises are 'restructured.' Same thing here."

News analysis:  These was something mechanical and pro forma about the Security Council only getting around to belatedly "condemning" the coup two weeks after it happened. Western diplomats, in an exercise of spin, told Inner City Press that they thought it would look better to wait and follow the African Union.  Abderrahim Ould Hadrami said that the African Union, and by implication the UN Security Council, had to criticize the coup as a "matter of policy," but that the new military government is reaching out to the AU. We'll see.

Watch this site. And this (on South Ossetia), and this --


   

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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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