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UN Remains Unreformed After Srgjan Kerim's Year,
Sarah Palin on Her Way
Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of
Inner City Press at the UN: News Analysis
UNITED NATIONS,
September 16 -- At the end of his
year as president of the UN General Assembly (PGA), Srgjan Kerim on
Tuesday
said he is "personally disappointed" with how the member states dealt
with a UN reform issue that, due to Press
coverage, became synonymous with Kerim:
the lack of independence of the PGA due not being paid by the UN but by
a
particular country or, in Kerim's case, company.
Early in his tenure, Inner
City Press asked
Kerim how he got paid, and it emerged that his pay came from his
country and
once and future employer, WAZ Media. While Kerim showed some
displeasure when
Inner City Press went on to analyze the potential conflicts of interest
created
by these arrangement, he maintained that he would seek General
Assembly action
before the end of his term.
On Tuesday,
as Nicaragua's Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann took over as PGA, Kerim
acknowledged
that the problem has not been fixed or reformed. He called the
situation
"urgent." We'll see. Video here,
from Minute 17:53.
Elsewhere
in his eight-minute response to Inner City Press' two question, Kerim
said that
the UN budget process is broken, and recounted that in December he
spent 23
hours straight in the UN working on the budget, even telling Ban
Ki-moon to
give a speech to the General Assembly promising to report on spending
every
three months.
Kerim and Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann,
solution to "urgent" problems not shown
Kerim also
took credit for changing the Capital Master Plan to renovate the UN
Headquarters, saying he wouldn't have been able to live with himself if
he'd
agreed to the initial plan, to leave a portion of UN staff inside the
building
while it was being fixed.
Kerim had a
farewell reception last week, at which shrimp and even foie gras were
served,
with cocktails sipped out on the balcony over the East River. He was
given an
award for the Millennium Development Goals, like his predecessor and
probably
his successor, and now according to his spokesman will return to WAZ
Media,
which he notes in investing in Vietnam and hospitals. We will follow
his
movements.
Footnotes: as
Ambassadors stream in to d'Escoto
Brockmann's speech to kick off the 63rd General Assembly on Tuesday
afternoon,
it emerged that two new crypto-states, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, have
tried
to get their representatives in but still do not have visas. It was
also said,
not for attribution that John McCain and Sarah Palin will come to the
General
Debate, specifically for the latter to "meet world leaders." Click
here
for Inner
City Press' Sarah Palin (well, Alaska House) story from earlier
today.
Watch this site, and this (UN) debate.
* * *
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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