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UN
Council Meets Many UK-based Somalis, Dodges
Requests for Human Rights Prosecutions
Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of
Inner City Press in Africa: News Analysis
DJIBOUTI,
June 3 -- Many of the
Somalis meeting at this luxury hotel in Djibouti with UN Security
Council
members from New York came in not from Somalia but from the UK. That
the
Transitional Federal Government is top-heavy with UK citizens has
recently been
exposed, as discussed here. But it emerged on June 2 that even the
vice-chairman
and spokesman for the ostensibly Eritrea-based Alliance for the
Re-Liberation
of Somalia, Abdulrahman Abdishakur
Warsame, lives in London.
When Inner
City Press asked him about reports that the town of Baidoa is
surrounded and
about to fall, he replied, "I am not in Baidoa, you should ask the
Transitional Federal Government." That he was not then physically in
Baidoa was obvious. But the disconnect is more fundamental. The A.R.S.
delegation in Djibouti is distant both from compatriots still in Asmara
who
demanded the immediate withdrawal of Ethiopian troops and from the
insurgents
on the ground who are fighting the Ethiopians.
UK Ambassador John Sawers was seen meeting Monday
night with some of the
A.R.S. delegation, after a liquor-less reception thrown by the Saudi
Arabians. Earlier
he had encouraged the traveling UN press corps not to freeze the A.R.S.
into a
hard-line position about the withdrawal of the Ethiopian, which
apparently
would be accomplished by quoting what they actually said.
Tuesday before the Council and press headed to Juba
in South Sudan, they
received a "Statement by Somali Non-state Actors and Civil Society"
which read suspiciously like a production of the UN's Ould-Adballah.
The
statement called Ould-Adballah's Office "the best institution to lead
the
current International supported peace process." Inner City Press
has asked about how the Somali delegations' hotel bills at the Djibouti
Palace Kempinski, with its $90 buffet, are being paid. "Half by the
E.C.," was the beginning of an answer. If and when we get more
information, it will be reported on this site.
Afterwards, Inner City Press asked the Somali Peace
and Human Rights
Network's Abdinasir A. Osman who, in his view, has been committing the
human
rights violations in Somalia, only the insurgents or also the
Ethiopians and
the Transitional Federal Government? He answered by referring to
Amnesty
International's reports, and said that the Security Council should
consider
referring perpetrators for criminal prosecution, presumably by the
International Criminal Court, to which the Council can and has referred
cases,
such as in Darfur.
UN's Ould-Adballah at
Council, Djibouti hotel bills not shown
At the
Council's close-out press conference in Djibouti, Inner City
Press asked UK Ambassador John Sawers if the Security Council is going
to act
on the civil society request that the Council "establish a commission
of
inquiry to investigate violations of human rights." Amb. Sawers said
that
will be up to the Somali parties. This is not the approach the Security
Council
has taken toward Sudan, to which the Council members were headed, on
their
special UN plane.
Curtain-raising
footnote: Three
weeks after violence emptied the southern Sudanese town of Abyei, the
UN
Security Council headed to Juba, to meet with the president of the
South Sudan
region, Salva Kiir. They were also slated to visit -- and render
"homage," one Ambassador said -- at the tomb of John Garang. We will
report from there, or from Khartoum after that. President al-Bashir has
traveled to the food summit in Rome, and so the Council will wait to
speak with
him.
* * *
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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718-716-3540
Other,
earlier Inner City Press are listed here, and some are available
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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