Inner City Press -- Investigative Reporting From the United Nations to Wall Street to the Inner City

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, October 7 -- With the UN Security Council having ended two days in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, it can and must be said: their program was not only one sided in terms of UN Peacekeeping briefings but more troublingly in terms of attending the opposition-less "National Dialogue" of Joseph Kabila.

Even as the Security Council and its French-picked scribes flew to Brussels, Inner City Press in New York asked the UN if the delegation would meet with any opposition in the DRC, such as the UDPS of Etienne Tshisekedi and Fabien Mutond. UN spokesperson Martin Nesirky would not answer that question.

  Not only did the French-led Security Council members not meet any opposition during their two days in the DRC -- they attended the closing ceremony of Kabila's National Dialogue and several members gushed about it. Fabien Mutond, vice president of UDPS' parliamentary group, denounced the faux Dialogue even while the Council members were there.

  While many on the Council might not care to be seen as taking sides in this way, it creates the following precedent: amid calls that Syria's Bashar al Assad with rebels, some of whom are Gulf funded, the UN Security Council gave its blessing to a faux National Dialogue in the Congo that did not include even opposition like the UDPS.

  Often in the UN one hears, don't compare anything. For example, just that Ban Ki-moon's UN issued a report exonerating itself for bringing cholera to Haiti that lacked credibility doesn't mean that Ban's report on chemical weapons in Syria shouldn't be taken at face value. But doesn't it?

  Here, how to view calls for Assad to meet a range of opposition in the vaunted Geneva 2 process when the Security Council, openly but as NOT covered by the mass media France was allowed to hand-pick to cover the trip, attended and gave its blessing to a faux dialogue process without the Congolese opposition participating? We will have more on this. Watch this site.