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In Khartoum, UN Council In as US
Envoy's Out, Alternative Tours, Spin of Carnival Rides
Byline:
Matthew Russell Lee of
Inner City Press in Africa: News Muse
KHARTOUM, June 3
-- As members of the UN Security
Council arrived in Khartoum fresh from hearing
about escalating tensions in
Abyei from South Sudan President Salva Kiir, U.S. envoy Richard
Williamson was
leaving Sudan, saying he was "sad and disappointed" at the lack of
prospects for peace. Nafie Al Nafie, advisor to Sudanese President Omar
Al-Bashir, said "if they come back, we will engage." Sudan's
Ambassador to the UN Abdalmahmoud Abdalhaleem Mohamed, in Khartoum to
greet the
same Ambassadors he lobbies in New York, was more blunt, saying
Williamson "did
not negotiate in good faith... He came just to pollute the atmosphere
and go."
Now the
Security Council is here, slated to meet with Nafie on Wednesday before
heading
Thursday to Darfur. Some in the Council delegation seem fixated on not
being
deemed polluters. In Juba, UK Ambassador John Sawers listed several
issues he
said will be raised to the leadership in Khartoum, including President
Bashir,
but again
did not mentioned the International Criminal Court among them.
UN in Yei [while UN
caption says Abyei, it has since been clarified],
carnival rides not shown
Since the
Council's meetings with Nafie and Foreign Minister Deng Alor are closed
to the
press, the Foreign Ministry has offered through the UN an "Alternative
Media Program," complete with "child soldiers arrested during the
attack
on the Sudanese capital," some alleged to be from Chad. The UN's child
soldiers envoy Radhika Coomaraswamy gave a briefing in New York about
Chad, saying
commitments had been won for the release of child soldiers. Whether she
interviewed these particular children is not known. Also not known is
the
origin of a rumor that the UN's plane was shot at. It was not, a media
on the
trip rushed to clarify.
When the
Council members arrived without incident in their special UN plane, it
was dark
in Khartoum. They were whisked into a greeting room and served tall
glasses of
fruit juice. Sudan's UN Ambassador was there, glad-handing diplomats
and media, including Inner City Press. Busses swept the delegation to a
spacious hotel, the Rotana, which
is said to only take payment in cash. Out the window, the rides of an
amusement
park were visible. The UN set up a media room with a half-dozen
computers, all
tuned to the webpage of the UN Mission in Sudan. "Are they secure?"
was a question asked more than once. The answer appeared to be no. Like
the UN
and its host, outside the carnival rides continued to spin.
* * *
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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Other,
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