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At UN, Khalilzad Says His Future Is In the Private Sector,
In the US and Not Kabul, Oil in the Air
Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of
Inner City Press at the UN: News Analysis
UNITED NATIONS,
June 13 -- Is this finally a real
denial? Friday afternoon in front of the Security Council, Inner City
Press
asked U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad to unequivocally deny -- or
confirm! --
reports that he may want to run for the presidency of Afghanistan. The
U.S.
Mission has transcribed the exchange:
Inner City Press: Today's
Washington Post said that you wanted to go to the Afghanistan
donor’s
conference in Paris but didn’t go in order not to upstage President
Karzai
because you may want to run for President of Afghanistan.
Can you unequivocally deny or confirm that is
your intention?
Ambassador Khalilzad: Well first
let me say that I was not going to go to the Paris conference - I think
there
was a discussion of perhaps a private dinner between me and President
Karzai. Second, with regard to the - I
didn't do that because in part my responsibilities here as President of
the
Council as we’ve seen today. With regard
to the piece in the post I will not ask Richard Holbrooke, one of my
distinguished predecessors who was quoted in that piece, I will not ask
him to
head my committee to search for my vice president.
But more seriously I have said strongly, as
clearly as I can that I am not a candidate for the President of
Afghanistan. How many times do I have to
say it? I am honored to have the
opportunity to represent the United States in the United Nations. This is my job and when I leave this job I
will work in the private sector in the United States of America. Thank you very much
Next
question -- Rand Corporation? Oil company?
We'll see.
Khalilzad at the stakeout: this way or that?
Amb.
Khalilzad also
read out a U.S. explanation of vote about the Council's Cyprus
resolution,
which Cyprus' Ambassador said was just an accommodation of the Turkish
side.
Click here
for Inner City Press' analysis. And later down in the Fifth
Committee of the General Assembly, the U.S. Mission's Bruce Rashkow
explained
the U.S. voting against the resolution to fund the UN Interim Force in
Lebanon,
as being politicized by an efforts, since 1996, to get Israel to pay
for damage
to UNIFIL. Nicaragua asked who had
called for a separate vote, and Rashkow said, we did.
And so it goes.
* * *
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
UN Office: S-453A, UN, NY 10017 USA
Tel: 212-963-1439
Reporter's mobile (and weekends):
718-716-3540
Other,
earlier Inner City Press are listed here, and some are available
in the ProQuest service, and now on Lexis-Nexis.
Copyright
2006-08 Inner City Press, Inc. To request
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