UN Plaza: To Ban or Not To Ban
Recorded: June 26

Posted: June 27
nautirony wrote on 06/28/2009 at 12:16 AM
Re: UN Plaza: To Ban or Not To Ban (Mark Leon Goldberg & Jacob Heilbrunn)
Jacob couldn't say exactly how UN/Moon screwed up with respect to Sri Lanka when Mark asked him for specifics. Here are some of them:
a. UN refrained from releasing the satellite photos that showed damages inflicted by the Sri Lankan Army.
b. Moon's chief of staff Vijay Nambiar went to Sri Lanka during the critical phase of the war. He only talked with the Sri Lankan government and did not use that opportunity to meet even the moderate Tamils.
c. Vijay Nambiar's brother (Satish Nambiar) was a paid consultant to the Sri Lankan government during the war. This is a well-known fact and this conflict of interest makes Nambiar an extremely poor choice as an envoy.
You can't justify these by saying that the UN staffers were unable to visit the conflict zone or that their hands were tied.
Further, as far as I could tell, UN's only access to Tamil refugees came when Moon visited the 'concentration camp' after the war. It was controlled access and his visit has achieved nothing so Mark nor UN can argue that there will be less cooperation from the Sri Lankan government since there has never been any meaningful cooperation...