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UNseen Fireworks, U.S. Holds Out for Minor Change
to ECOSOC Text on Climate Change
Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of
Inner City Press at the UN: News Analysis
UNITED NATIONS,
July 4 -- On America's independence
day, when fireworks in the sky over the UN headquarters in New York
will find
mostly empty offices for the first time in years, we must make this
diagnosis:
the UN, with the possible exception of its Security Council, blathers
on
without accomplishing much, while the U.S. grandstands and isolates
itself.
How else to
explain the surreal scene on July 3, when the closing session of the
"High
Level Segment" of the Economic and Social Council dragged past five
then
six then seven o'clock, with the U.S. threatening to "block
consensus" on a bland ministerial statement? The President of ECOSOC Leo
Merores joined the diplomats and staff and few
reporters drinking
in the Delegates' Lounge next to the ECOSOC chamber. Sitting
with him was ECOSOC staffer Nikhil
Seth who, ever polite, had told Inner City Press to pay particular
attention to
the nation-specific portion of the Segment, acknowledging that the more
global
presentations are of less interest and value.
Inner City
Press having been told that "they are negotiating in the Trusteeship
Council chamber, this could go all night," ambled through the ECOSOC to
the
Trusteeship chamber. Security officers shrugged apologetically. "What
in
God's name are they talking about?" one asked. There was dark talk
about
biofuels. But ultimately the only change
adopted was to move a mere segment of sentence, referring to the Kyoto
protocol
and therefore to climate change, from the body of the text to a
footnote.
That's it -- that's what the U.S. was holding out for. High
Level Segment, indeed.
ECOSOC session and President, footnoted sentence and
Delegates Lounge not shown
Sam Adam's
Summer Ale stopped flowing so freely from the tap of the Delegates
Lounge. After
the UN bar's last call, the diplomats reassembled in the ECOSOC chamber. The U.S. representative, after Bolivia and
before Cuba spoke, begrudgingly "joined consensus." The President of
ECOSOC, back in from the bar, bragged that unlike previous years, under
his
watch this High Level Segment was adopting its Ministerial Statement
the day
the Segment ended and not after. When
Inner City Press asked Leo Merores directly
about this, at the
actual end of the session, he said he was referring only to the
previous two
years. "It's a new ECOSOC," Inner City Press nevertheless was told.
Here's hoping.
Footnotes: There's
been a traditional of UN staff
bringing guests to the riverside Headquarters to watch the Macy's
fireworks on
the Fourth of July. The UN has allowed unnamed VIPs to cavort directly
under
the 38 story tower on the so-called South Lawn, the scene in February
of a
still
not entirely solved tragedy. But unceremoniously a few
days before the
holiday, the UN sent an email that the building would be closed this
year, due
to construction and the Capital Master Plan. The building is open
during the
week, although hardhats from Skanska are mucking around with asbestos
in the
halls. But there seems little reason to block fireworks-viewing this
year.
There's been grumbling, but still there will be fireworks.
On the still not entirely solved tragedy,
there's been dissatisfaction with how it was handled. Due to the
scorched-earth
response to previous reporting, we'll be circumspect for now. But watch
this
site.
* * *
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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Other,
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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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