Diplomatic Briefing
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Newsline: Diplomat accuses police of ‘uncivilized’ arrest in N.Y
A senior Caribbean diplomat has accused the New York City Police Department of “flagrant violation” of the rules of diplomatic immunity and privileges by aggressively arresting the ambassador of St. Vincent and the Grenadines. The New York police countered by saying that the envoy from the tiny island nation refused to identify himself after pushing past a security barrier intended to protect Israel’s diplomatic headquarters in New York City from attack. In a letter to U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice, Delano Bart, ambassador of St. Kitts and Nevis and chairman of the UN caucus of the Caribbean nations group, known as CARICOM, said the incident occurred on Wednesday after St. Vincent’s envoy, Camillo Gonsalves, stepped out of his car. Bart said in the letter that Gonsalves walked past a police barrier to take the elevator to his office. “On his way to the elevator, he was shouted at and confronted by a police officer, who rudely questioned his action and then grabbed him by the neck and shoulder, displaying undue physical harassment against the ambassador,” Bart wrote. He described the police officer’s treatment of Gonsalves as “provocative and uncivilized” and a “very serious and flagrant violation of obligations under the United Nations Headquarters Agreement and the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations.” Under those agreements, the United States commits to recognizing diplomatic immunity from arrest and prosecution for accredited foreign diplomats. The New York Police Department presented a different version of events. Paul Browne, an NYPD spokesman, said Gonsalves stepped out of his car in front of a double police barrier in front of the building where his office is located. The Israeli mission and consulate are housed in the same building. Gonsalves moved the barriers and walked through, ignoring orders from a police officer not to move the barriers and to stop, Browne said. Gonsalves refused to stop or to identify himself. He was arrested for disorderly conduct and handcuffed near the elevators inside the building. “He was subsequently identified and released at the scene,” Browne said.
http://www.windsorstar.com/Diplomat+accuses+police+uncivilized+arrest/6390159/story.html
Commentary: Canada sets ‘bad example’ at talks
Blunt denunciation of the Canadian government’s “bullying” actions on global climate change made by the South African high commissioner illustrates the frustration, even irritation, of some countries over Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s perceived undermining of the Kyoto Protocol. That irritation increased following Environment Minister Peter Kent’s dismissal of the Kyoto Protocol as “in the past” and rumours that Harper intends to withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol and Canada’s unfulfilled commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In an interview with the Ottawa Citizen, High Commissioner Mohau Pheko minced no words in criticizingKent’s hard-line challenge of the founding principles of the environmental agreement, including that developed nations should take responsibility for initially causing the threat now posed by global warming. Pheko said her government – currently hosting environmental negotiations inDurbaninvolving 191 countries – had been approached by developing countries that have been lobbied byCanadato leave the Kyoto Protocol, implying that Canadian aid might be in jeopardy. WhateverOttawaactually has in mind concerning the Kyoto Protocol, other countries clearly do not appreciate the negative effect Canada is having in undermining the agreement.China’s national news agency, Xinhua, said the suggestion the Harper government will ditch the Kyoto Protocol is “setting a bad example” to other developed nations. Xinhua accused Canada of undermining global efforts against global climate change and damaging its own reputation in pursuit of short-term interests.Chinahas reportedly indicated it might agree to some form of binding emissions reductions, something industrialized nations want. While visiting Ottawa, United Nations secretary general Ban Ki-moon publicly called on Harper to seriously commit himself to taking greater steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, reminding him his country had a legal commitment to do so. So far, however, Harper has pointedly ignored such blandishments.
http://www.edmontonjournal.com/business/Canada+sets+example+talks/5822948/story.html
Newsline: Eriterian envoy blames Ethiopia for diplomatic row
Kenya’s ambassador to the United Nations is expected to seek audience with the President of the UN Security Council regarding Nairobi’s military intervention in Somalia. At the same time, the UN’s top body is considering a request by Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki to address the full council. Mr Afwerki is believed to be eager to head off additional UN sanctions against Eritrea related in part to his country’s alleged involvement inSomalia’s civil war. Kenya has accused Eritrea of supplying arms to the Al-Shabaab militants that Kenyan forces are now battling in southern Somalia. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has remained silent on Kenya’s intervention inSomalia. Portuguese UN ambassador Jose Filipe Moraes Cabral told reporters that he will be meeting “at the beginning of next week” with Kenya’s ambassador, Mr Macharia Kamau. Mr Kamau wrote to the Security Council last month to explain why its forces have entered Somalia. He said then thatKenya’s action was being coordinated with Somalia’s Transitional Federal Government.
http://mobile.nation.co.ke/News/-/1290/1267924/-/format/xhtml/-/lf5v8dz/-/
Commentary: Freed diplomat castigates Ottawa for official veil of silence
Ottawa is bungling rescue missions by not telling families in Canada whether their loved ones are alive or dead, a Canadian diplomat once held hostage overseas says. Robert Fowler says that Ottawa’s mission to free him is tarnished by the fact that his wife, Mary, was kept in emotional limbo for much of his 130-day ordeal. She got so frustrated by official silence in Ottawa that she went to the United Nations complex inManhattanto demand answers. “Mary stormed down to the UN headquarters in New York, where she had arranged to meet UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon,” reads Mr. Fowler’s new memoir. The world’s top diplomat told Ms. Fowler what the Canadian government had not. “‘We have good and explicit reason to believe they [the hostages] are alive and in good health.’” In some scathing criticisms, Mr. Fowler says the Mounties should not be trusted to be in control ofCanada’s negotiations to free hostages abroad. Officials from the national police force “never understood the extent to which West Africa was notWestern Canada,” he writes in his memoir. He adds that “the RCMP seemed to have decided that our families could not be trusted with the knowledge we were alive.” The December, 2008, kidnapping of Mr. Fowler and fellow Canadian Louis Guay broughtCanada’s attempts at rescue missions to the fore. The two men, abducted inNigerwhile working as UN envoys, spent four months in the clutches of an al-Qaeda faction. Dozens of Mounties, intelligence agents, soldiers and diplomats were dispatched to Africa to negotiate their freedom, but precisely what Canada might have bartered for it has never been made clear. Mr. Fowler spent decades shaping Canada’s military and foreign policies as a senior civil servant in Ottawa, and his wife had access to top UN officials because she had worked for the agency. He says he appreciates that many Mounties worked “selflessly and tirelessly” on his case, and that his core criticism is institutional. The memoir argues the RCMP likely lacks the sophistication – and sensitivity – necessary for such missions. Mr. Fowler says RCMP officers arrived in Africa in the quixotic hope of arresting some of the world’s most elusive terrorists. That meant, he says, “proof-of-life” footage shot by terrorist captors was withheld from his family for long periods in hopes the videos could one day be used as evidence in a prosecution. Mr. Fowler says he finds it disturbing that his former colleagues at the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade appear content to take a back seat to security agencies on hostage files. “Where was DFAIT in all this?” he writes, adding that department could have at least done better at consoling the families. Government agencies did not respond to Globe and Mail questions about the issues raised in the memoir.
Newsline: U.N. building in Nigeria attacked
A car loaded with explosives crashed into the main United Nations building inNigeria’s capital and exploded, killing at least 18 people in one of the deadliest assaults on the international body in a decade. A radical Muslim sect blamed for a series of attacks in the country claimed responsibility for the bombing, a major escalation of its sectarian fight againstNigeria’s weak central government. The brazen assault in a neighborhood surrounded by heavily fortified diplomatic posts represented the first suicide attack to target foreigners in oil-richNigeria, where people already live in fear of the radical Boko Haram sect. The group, which has reported links to al-Qaida, wants to impose a strict version of Shariah law in the nation and is vehemently opposed to Western education and culture. “It is an attack on the global community,” said Viola Onwuliri, a junior Nigerian foreign minister, as she viewed the bomb site. A sedan loaded with explosives crashed through two gates at the exit of the United Nations compound as guards tried to stop it, witnesses said. The car crashed through the glass front of the main reception area of the building and detonated, inflicting the most damage possible, a spokesman for the Nigerian National Emergency Management Agency said. The headquarters, known as U.N. House, had offices for about 400 employees working for 26 U.N. humanitarian and development agencies. Authorities were working to account for everyone in the building at the time of the blast. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called the car bombing “an assault on those who devote their lives to helping others.” “We condemn this terrible act utterly,” Ban said at U.N. headquarters. “We do not yet have precise casualty figures, but they are likely to be considerable. A number of people are dead; many more are wounded.”
http://m2.tbo.com/content/2011/aug/27/T2NEWSO1-un-building-in-nigeria-attacked/news-nationworld/
Newsline: Assault on son of UN diplomat sparks disquiet in Geneva
A vicious assault on the son of a United Nations diplomat in the centre of Geneva last month has caused alarm over safety in the western Swiss city. The Swiss foreign ministry said it was “concerned” by the “deterioration of the security situation in recent months”. This follows a warning by the UN to its staff about going out alone in the city at night. Swiss Foreign Minister Micheline Calmy-Rey, who is also the acting Swiss president, has written to Isabel Rochat, head of security and police in Geneva, to voice her concern and a meeting is planned with the Geneva authorities on September 12. The ministry said the presence of international organisations in Geneva was a “pillar” of Switzerland’s foreign policy, and that the safety of the city was a top priority for the UN and diplomatic missions. The police say no one has been arrested so far in connection with the assault, which took place in the centre of Geneva at 4am on July 16, but which has only now gained wider attention. The victim – who was identified only as the son of an American UN diplomat – was allegedly attacked as he crossed the Pont de l’Ile by up to a dozen assailants who beat him with metal rods and attempted to throw him into the river Rhone before a passing cyclist raised the alarm. He reportedly suffered small fractures to his back, as well as cuts and bruises, and was recovering but said to be extremely shocked by the incident. The UN, which has its European headquarters in Geneva, sent a series of emails to staff including a note warning that “one should not, repeat not, be out alone late at night in the city centre”. A later toned-down memo urged diplomats to “exercise caution and prudence when out in the evening or early morning hours in downtown Geneva”. Geneva is regularly ranked in the top ten of quality-of-living listings but continues to hold the top spot as the Swiss city with the highest number of crimes per inhabitant – 179.5 per thousand. A local businessman who has been directly involved in the on-going problems pointed the finger at a group of 200-plus hardcore petty criminals from North Africa, who he said had continued to prey on tourists and passers-by over the past five years. Speaking anonymously, he told swissinfo.ch: “The same group of small predators is still active; they are arrested and released and still here; they have fine-tuned their methods and know that nothing can happen to them.” This is the legal option of imprisoning asylum seekers who are repeat offenders for up to 24 months while preparing their return home. Other cantons follow the procedure, but the option is not used very often in Geneva.
Commentary: Former Israeli diplomat sees waning image
When Gabriela Shalev arrived at the United Nations in 2008 asIsrael’s first female ambassador, she was determined to launch a diplomatic offensive to improve her country’s international standing. But the respected contract-law scholar says she ended up spending most of her tenure on the defense, coping with reactions toIsrael’s military campaign in the Gaza Strip, the subsequent Goldstone Commission’s inquiry into allegations of war crimes and the high-seas raid of the protest ship Mavi Marmara, in which Israeli commandos killed nine pro-Palestinian activists. Now Shalev, who stepped down in October and is president of Ono Academic College outside Tel Aviv, warns that Israel’s image is about to take another hit with a Palestinian initiative to win statehood recognition from the U.N. next month. In recent weeks, some Palestinian leaders have appeared to be hesitant about going to the U.N. If you don’t think they can lose, why is that? They are genuinely divided because they know what we know: They will not gain anything new except for a little public diplomacy. They already have legitimacy all over the world. They are already recognized by many countries inSouth Americaand other places. So they don’t really need this kind of declaration. So the strategy is to delegitimizeIsraeland launch a diplomatic war. They failed in all the other wars. In 1948, 1967, 1973, the economic boycott and in terrorism. Now this diplomatic war could bring them a lot of gains. The world has adopted their narrative, right or wrong. They see the Palestinians as occupied.Israelhas not succeeded in bringing our story to the rest of the globe.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-israel-shalev-qa-20110808,0,2358239.story
Commentary: Former diplomat analyzes systemic weaknesses throughout U.N.
As a diplomat of a small developing nation, M. M. Pierce claims to have seen firsthand how U.N.-related abuse of power and other corruption works systemically with impunity in any U.N. organization, and even in regional intergovernmental ones. In “At the Core: The United Nation’s Tragically Massive Corruption and How It Affects You”, the ex-diplomat presents case studies in an attempt to show how multi-governmental organizations have been allowed to become vulnerable to corruption coupled without fear of punishment for decades. The result, Pierce argues, is that intergovernmental organizations today are often actually doing the opposite of bettering the world we all share. “The bureaucratically related abuse of power and other corrupt practices,” Pierce explains, “as they occur in multilateral organizations, represent the most dangerous form of corruption today, especially because of these organisms’ global reach and because the related impunity is practically guaranteed.” Pierce then points out the main weaknesses identified in the book in personnel and auditing policies and in the administrative judiciary that may have helped to cover up potentially dangerously corrupt practices emanating from the bureaucratic core since the early days of the U.N.’s existence. While many think U.N. organizations are doing what they can to help maintain peace and sustainable development throughout the world, Pierce aims to expose a festering underbelly and then tell us why the simple-to-understand and even relatively inexpensive reforms suggested would be the cure. “International corruption underpinned by U.N.-related bureaucratic violations of the rule of law and justice can only bring us more international political and economic crises along with organized crime, including organized terrorism,” says Pierce. “U.N. goals should bring about the complete opposite.”
http://www.mmdnewswire.com/m-m-pierce-at-the-core-58180.html
Newsline: Canadian feds fighting refugee claim by ex-diplomat
Ottawain its crackdown against suspected war criminals is fighting to stop a refugee claim by the Democratic Republic of Congo’s former top UN diplomat who drove up to the Canadian border with his wife and eight children. Rachidi Ekanza Ezokola, 46, is suspected of taking part in crimes against humanity during his days as a senior diplomat and should be sent packing fromCanada, government lawyers allege. Police said he is not on a list of most-wanted, suspected war criminals released by Canada Border Services Agency. Ezokola is one of more than 10 former diplomats from African countries to claim refugee status inCanadain recent years. CBSA officers are monitoring cases of defecting diplomats in a bid to deport them due to possible links to crimes against humanity. Ezokola was the former second counsellor and chargé d’affaires of the DRC’s permanent mission to the UN inNew York Cityfrom 2004 to 2008. Before that posting, he held senior government positions in the ministries of labour, finance and human rights, court documents show. He also sat on various commissions and addressed the security council in 2007 while at the UN. Ezokola claimed he fell out favour with his political masters and was forced to flee in 2008 by driving fromNew York Cityto a Canadian border crossing where he, his wife and eight children filed failed refugee claims, court documents show. His claim was rejected due to “complicity by association in the crimes committed by the security forces of various governments of the DRC.” During Ezokola’s tenure at the UN, massacres, murders, mutilations, rapes and abductions occurred on a frequent basis in the DRC. Ezokola appealed his failed refugee bid to the Federal Court of Canada last year and was given a new refugee hearing before an immigration board. But, this month,Ottawaappealed to the Federal Court of Appeal to prevent a hearing from taking place. No decision has been rendered.
http://m.torontosun.com/2011/07/22/feds-fighting-refugee-claim-by-ex-diplomat?noimage
Commentary: Diplomats scramble ahead of Palestinian UN bid
September 19, 2011 at 8:24 am · Filed under Commentaries, Israel, Palestine, United Nations, US
With a tense week ahead for the future of theMiddle East, the United States and Europe scrambled Sunday for a strategy that would help avoid a jarring showdown over whether to admit an independentPalestineas a new United Nations member. Instead, they sought to guideIsraeland the Palestinians back into the tough bargaining on a long-sought peace agreement. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton discussed the current trajectory in New York, in which the Palestinian plan to gain statehood and membership at the U.N. would run headfirst into an American veto in the Security Council, and possible Israeli recriminations. Yet there was no apparent and immediate solution to the many problems that have hinderedMideastpeace efforts for months. Diplomats were working feverishly as part of an increasingly desperate effort to guide the two parties back into direct negotiations, but were tight-lipped on whether the slim chances for a breakthrough were improving. The Palestinians are frustrated by their inability to win fromIsraelconcessions such as a freeze on settlements in the West Bankand east Jerusalem. And with violence out of the question and bilateral talks with Israel failing, they see the U.N. route as the only viable route for progress in the short term. To address the Palestinian concerns, Western officials were discussing the possibility of including some timeframes, however vague, in any statement put out by theMideastpeace mediators _ the U.S., EU, U.N. and Russia_ known as the Quartet, officials said. These would focus on the restart of Israeli-Palestinian talks and signs of tangible progress. Envoys from all four gathered Sunday inNew Yorkand U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon met with Quartet envoy Tony Blair. A further meeting of Quartet officials was planned for Monday, officials said, with Ashton possibly presenting some ideas to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on the same day. The timeframes wouldn’t be deadlines, as such, but would seem to address the Palestinian desire to see quick action. The offer would come with an unchanged message thatWashingtonwould veto a Palestinian bid at the Security Council for U.N. recognition and membership, but at the very least it would represent a dignity-saving compromise for Abbas’ U.S.-backed government. The alternative concern is that an embarrassment for his government would embolden Hamas, which the U.S. and Israel consider a terrorist organization and which would be far less eager to negotiate a two-state settlement with the Jewish nation. The irony is that only 12 months ago, President Barack Obama said he wanted the U.N. to be welcomingPalestineas its newest member this year. But talks broke down long ago, and theU.S.is in the unenviable position of leading the opposition to something it actually supports, fearful a Palestinian victory might cause a debilitating rift withIsraeland set the talks back further. American officials were working to secure additional opposition to recognition, officials said. Without nine affirmative votes in the 15-member Council, the Palestinian resolution would fail andWashingtonwouldn’t have to act alone.U.S.officials believe six other members may vote against or abstain, meaning the Palestinians would fall short. That tally could not be immediately confirmed. Heading off or watering down the Palestinian resolution had been the goal of international diplomats. If they can accomplish that, they hope to parlay it into a meeting between the Israeli and Palestinian leaders where the two sides would re-launch negotiations. But the Palestinians have refused to back down and give up the little leverage they hope to win. Even with a loss in the Security Council, the Palestinians were expected to take their case for recognition to the General Assembly, where they enjoy widespread support and the U.S. cannot block it. A nod from the General Assembly could give the Palestinians access to international judicial bodies such as the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court. The Israelis fear such courts would target them unfairly. Given the stakes and entrenched positions, the best theU.S.and its allies may be able to achieve is a delay in action on the Palestinian bid.
http://m.billingsgazette.com/mobile/article_55d0c58c-b7b3-5a91-963b-9624ade8d14d.html
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