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At UN, Only Some War Criminals Can Be Spoken With,
Only Some Ambassadors Can Speak; Georgia Meeting, Ethiopians Defer
Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of
Inner City Press at the UN: News Analysis
UNITED NATIONS,
July 15 -- France would not meet
with Sudanese president Al-Bashir if the International Criminal Court
judges
affirm prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo's request yesterday to indict him
for war
crimes, French Ambassador to the UN Jean-Maurice Ripert told the press
on
Tuesday. He said that to refuse to meet with those under indictment of
war
crimes is policy. When Inner City Press asked indicted Ugandan war
criminal
Joseph Kony meeting with UN representatives, from Jan Egeland to
Mozambique's
former president Chissano, Ripert emphasized he was speaking about
European
Union policy.
On
the question of the day, whether the Security Council might vote under
Article
16 of the ICC's Rome Statute to suspend any indictment of Bashir for a
year,
U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad declined to comment, as he had after
Friday's
double-veto of the draft resolution to impose sanctions on Zimbabwe's
Robert
Mugabe government. Tuesday Khalilzad remained focused on that vote,
saying that
the onus is on those who voted against the resolution to now show
results, and
noting that those who opposed sanctions on Mugabe are those most active
in
pushing to suspend the ICC proceedings on Bashir. Khalilzad's strong
words
Friday against South African president Mbeki, and in favor of his
presumptive
successor Jacob Zuma, continued to draw fire, from Pretoria and on the
Security
Council sidelines.
Ban and Kouchner: Only Some War Criminals Can Be Spoken With,
Only Some Ambassadors Can Speak
Likewise
Ban Ki-moon's strange
Saturday denunciation of Zimbabwe's ambassador, for
having dared question his impartiality. Inner City Press asked Ban's
deputy
spokesperson Marie Okabe why Ban had criticized the Zimbabwean's
statement,
while saying when asked about similar criticism
about his Kosovo positions from
Russia's Vitaly Churkin that the Ambassador is entitled to his
opinion. Are only some countries'
ambassadors -- five,
to be exact -- entitled to their opinions? Ms. Okabe declined to
compare or explain Ban's
disparate reactions to similar comments by the Ambassadors of Russia
and
Zimbabwe.
On a
question her Office did respond on,
the answer wasn't entirely clear. Australia's Defense Minister Joel
Fitzgibbon
on July 11 told Inner City Press that his country had suspended its
deployment
of nine military officers to Darfur, consistent
with "UN policy." That
day, Inner City Press asked Ms. Okabe's colleague Farhan Haq to
confirm and
explain this policy, but got no answer. Tuesday, after Ms. Okabe was
asked,
Inner City Press received a written response that on "other
contingents,
including the Australians, that have suspended their deployments to
UNAMID,
just Ethiopia so far and only for a brief period." This appears to deny
the statement by Australia's defense minister, but to disclose a
suspension of
deployment by Ethiopia. We'll see.
Footnotes: ICC prosecutor Ocampo unceremoniously
cancelled his Wednesday press conference about his move to indict
Bashir, and
now replaces it with a Thursday morning presser, purportedly limited to
the
10th anniversary of the ICC's Rome Statute. We'll see.
Two other draft resolutions pending
before the Council, on Israeli settlements and on the
situation in Georgia,
have been slowed down. Diplomats says that on settlements, the debate
is
whether to have a wider resolution or just stick to the settlements.
Georgia
has requested a Council meeting; its date and format were under
discussion with
Russia and the Vietnamese Council presidency. At the end of Tuesday's
meeting, a staffer announced that the Georgia meeting will be on
Monday, but that it will be "private," that is, closed. When Inner City
Press asked if South Ossetia might be represented, the staffer just
laughed. Watch this site.
And this --
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