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On Sri Lanka, Ban Ki-moon's Buck Passing to UN Councils & Agencies Questioned, No Answers on Nambiar Role

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, April 26 -- In the hours after the belated release of the UN Panel of Experts' report on Sri Lanka war crimes, numerous diplomats expressed surprise to Inner City Press at Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's cover letter saying that for an “investigation mechanism, [Ban] is advised that this will require host country consent or a decision from Member States through an appropriate intergovernmental forum.”

  “That seems more than a little strange,” a Security Council member's ambassador who covers the issue told Inner City Press on Monday night at Colombia's end of Council presidency reception. Others mentioned for example Ban's investigation into the destruction of facilities in Gaza, and earlier UN probes.

  At a malaria event in the UN General Assembly lobby, Inner City Press asked one of Ban's advisers -- not his chief of staff, who was involved in the White Flag killings described in the Report at Paragraphs 170 and 171 -- whether Ban's passing the buck to “an appropriate intergovernmental forum” was a reference to the UN Human Right Council, which already converted a proposal on accountability into a celebration of the Rajapaksa's bloody victory.

  The Security Council, the Ban adviser responded to Inner City Press. But there a veto seems assured, based not only on the issue of Sri Lanka being kept off the Council's agenda in 2009 during what a then UN official called the “bloodbath on the beach,” but also comments made, notably by Russia, when the report was mentioned in the Security Council last week by Department of Political Affairs chief Lynn Pascoe.

  While the Permanent Representative of one of the states most interested in Sri Lanka told Inner City Press on Monday night that perhaps the make-up or balance of views in the Human Rights Council has changed since the last vote on Sri Lanka -- whose advocate at that time in Geneva has since been kept out of the loop -- for Ban to defer to the HRC and Security Council is a recipe for inaction and impunity.

   Monday evening at 9 pm US Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice issued a statement, which does not address Ban's argument that he and the UN are powerless to order an investigation absent Rajapaksa consent or a vote in the Security Council, General Assembly or Human Rights Council, from which the US was initially unsuccessful in excluding Libya, and now seeks to exclude Syria. Click here for Rice's statement. A request to the French Mission's spokesmen for France's position was not been answered; a UK statement was said to be coming.

  Ban's Office of the Spokesperson has still not answered question about chief of staff Vijay Nambiar's involvement in the White Flag killings and in reviewing the Panel's report, which Inner City Press submitted on April 21 and again on April 25.

  Inner City Press debated these issues with a Sri Lankan journalist on radio on Monday night, click here for the podcast, and watch this site.

Footnote: while some media has made much of Ban's statement that “he will respond positively to the Panel's recommendation for a review of the UN's actions,” deferring even this to “after consultations with relevant agencies, funds and programs” is telling.

  UNICEF, for example, had its high energy biscuits excluded from Sri Lanka on the theory that the Tamil Tigers of the LTTE could eat and benefit from them, as detailed in the report. It was not any UN affiliate which withheld casualty figures: it was the Secretariat, and Ban's own chief of staff's role most needs to be investigated. But Ban has allowed him to be involved even in reviewing the report. Watch this site.