As Blinken Zooms To UN, Questions of SG Candidates Blocked & Cameroon Posed by Inner City Press
US Amb. Erica Barks-Ruggles said the UNSG issue will come on on March 29, but that Cameroon is not on the UNSC agenda. Nor is Honduras. Inner City Press will keep asking
By Matthew Russell Lee, Patreon
BBC - Guardian UK - Honduras - ESPN
UN GATE / SDNY, March 26 – With US Secretary of State Antony Blinken headed to the United Nations on March 29, if only virtually, on March 26 Inner City Press asked Department of State Bureau of International Organization Affairs Senior Bureau Official Erica Barks-Ruggles two questions about the UN.
First, Inner City Press asked why the US Mission has declined, during its now-waning UN Security Council presidency, to circulate to the other member states the at least four names of opponents to Antonio Guterres for the position of UN Secretary General.
The Office of the President of the General Assembly Volkan Bozkir - a man who complained that NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio would not meet with him, which Inner City Press linked to Bozkir's previous bigoted statements it has reported on - has repeatedly said he shared the four names with US Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield.
But none have been circulated, despite the fact that the applicable UNGA resolution does not require, as Guterres and his supporters are trying to imply, that only candidates submitted by and beholden to a member state get circulated.
Erica Barks-Ruggles replied that the Secretary General issue would be on Secretary Blinken's agenda during his virtual visit.
Inner City Press would ask a follow up, but despite being accredited at the IMF, and in-house Press at the SDNY court, the UN under Guterres does not allow Inner City Press in to its briefings, even by WebEx. For that reason, and in full disclosure, it is one of the four. We will have more on this.
Inner City Press also asked if the Biden Administration sees any UN role in addressing the ongoing mass killings in the Anglophone areas of Cameroon.
Erica Barks-Ruggles apologized for not having more, noting that the UN Security Council has not taken up Cameroon.
Inner City Press might well have asked the same about Honduras, whose president Juan Orlando Hernandez was just showed up in the SDNY as linked to narco-trafficking. We'll have more on this as well. Watch this site.
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