Bolton Receives UNDP Chief's Promise That Propaganda Won't Be Financed
BY BENNY AVNI - Staff Reporter of the Sun
August 25, 2005
URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/19146
UNITED NATIONS - The United Nations Development Program's chief, Kemal Dervis, promised the American and Israeli ambassadors yesterday that his agency will work to avoid financing one-sided political campaigns as it did recently in Gaza, where T-shirts and posters distributed by Palestinian Arabs and urging future Israeli concessions bore the U.N. agency's logo.
Israel's ambassador to Turtle Bay, Dan Gillerman, meanwhile, took the U.N. undersecretary general for political affairs, Ibrahim Gambari, to task for failing to grasp the historic nature of Israel's separation plan. By including a run of the mill description of events in his monthly briefing to the U.N. Security Council, Mr. Gillerman said Secretary-General Annan's point man risked making the United Nations irrelevant.
The Turkish Mr. Dervis, who recently took the UNDP leadership from the U.N. chief of staff, Mark Malloch Brown, got his first taste of the agency's tendency to get involved in one-sided politics last week. The UNDP-financed Gaza campaign, in which a number of materials displayed the slogan Today Gaza, Tomorrow the West Bank and Jerusalem, was criticized by Washington lawmakers of both parties. It was also harshly rebuked by America's U.N. ambassador, John Bolton, who met with Mr. Dervis yesterday after telling him he wanted to discuss the issue.
I repeated that our effectiveness as a development institution depends on our neutrality, and that anything that puts that in jeopardy or raises question marks about it is really not acceptable, Mr. Dervis told The New York Sun after meeting with Mr. Bolton yesterday. Mr. Dervis added that the agency already has procedures meant to assure that this type of event does not happen again and that he intends to make sure those procedures are kept. But to make sure 100% - it's difficult, he said.
Also yesterday, the Security Council issued a non-binding statement welcoming the beginning of the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and parts of the northern West Bank. The statement, approved by all 15 council members, lauded the coordination between the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority, and called on both sides to cooperate with the quartet - America, Russia, the European Union, and the United Nations - in implementing the plan known as the road map.
The council statement was issued after Mr. Gambari, a longtime Nigerian diplomat, carried the first Middle East briefing to the council in his new capacity as Mr. Annan's top political adviser.
Mr. Gambari said that the disengagement from Gaza and the northern West Bank marks a watershed in that it constitutes the first removal by Israel of settlements on occupied Palestinian territory. He complimented Prime Minister Sharon for his determination and courage to carry out the disengagement in the face of forceful and strident internal opposition.
But the bulk of the briefing was almost indistinguishable from past reports by the U.N. political department, detailing every addition to West Bank settlements, describing hardships suffered by Palestinian Arabs as result of Israel's security fence, and rebuking Israel for erecting security oriented roadblocks.
At such a historic moment I expect the U.N. to see the big picture, Mr. Gillerman said. What we got was a technical report that says business as usual. And today is not a day for business as usual. Israelis in particular, he told the Sun, will find it hard to understand such a mundane briefing after going through such a difficult week on the ground.
There is a danger that if this is what these reports produce, the reports themselves become irrelevant and that at the end of the day, the perception may be that the body that issues them is irrelevant, Mr. Gillerman said. He added that he told Mr. Gambari that he was disappointed with the briefing.
We recognize the historic nature of what has happened, Mr. Gambari told the Sun. He added, however, Don't forget this is a monthly briefing. We try to take account of what has happened since the last month. The briefing, he insisted, was meant to recognize the historic nature [of the withdrawal], and also to remind the parties of what needs to be done.