inside the glass house

Annan's smoking gun and the Lankan visit 'scandal'
NEW YORK -- When Secretary-General Kofi Annan took the decisive step to ban smoking at UN headquarters last month, he went along with the overwhelming majority of staffers who were clamouring for a smoke-free environment in a building where New York city's tough anti-smoking laws do not apply.

But in doing so, Annan incurred the wrath of power-conscious diplomats who uphold their sovereign right to smoke as and when they please-- and at a time and a place of their choosing inside the glasshouse. Hours after the announcement, Russian Ambassador Sergey Lavrov defied the ban by publicly lighting up a cigarette outside the Security Council chamber.

When a reporter asked him about Annan's decision to ban smoking, Lavrov said: "The Secretary-General does not own the building. The UN building is owned by member nations. The Secretary-General is just a hired manager."

Lavrov, who once had a working knowledge of Sinhala when he served as a junior diplomat in the Soviet embassy in Colombo in the early 1970s, also drove home the point that Annan can by all means "tell his underlings what to do, but not member states or members of diplomatic missions".

And Lavrov was dead right -- diplomatically and protocol-wise. Annan is only a servant of member nations and answerable to those who elect him as chief administrative officer of the world body. Perhaps Foreign Minister Tyronne Fernando, who is aspiring for the post of Secretary-General, may not be aware that it is one of the world's most stressful jobs where you get politically battered from all sides -- whether you are right or just plain wrong.

Sri Lanka's current Permanent Representative to the UN Charlie ("they call me Charlie because they cannot pronounce Chitambaranathan") Mahendran, whose boss is the foreign minister, will have his role reversed and be Tyronne Fernando's boss if he becomes Secretary-General. A political paradox, but that's another story.
Last week Annan was embroiled in another dispute -- described by a former UN official as a "scandal" -- this time involving Sri Lanka.

The scuttlebutt in the corridors of the UN was that Annan, under pressure from Tamil expatriate groups and LTTE sympathisers, was toying with the idea of perhaps meeting with Velupillai Prabhakaran inside LTTE held territory.

For Prabhakaran, who has been indicted by an Indian court for his alleged involvement in the assassination of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, a meeting with Annan would be a glorious photo-op warranting tremendous political mileage.

If Annan was even seriously thinking of such a meeting, he would have been ill-advised to do so. And some of his senior henchmen in the Secretariat would be wrong in mis-advising him.

To the best of everyone's knowledge, the Secretary-General has officially not met with any rebel leaders before -- not leaders of Hamas, Hezbollah, Al-Qaeda or even the Real Irish Republican Army (IRA).

Since Annan or his office did not formally announce any proposed plans for a visit to Sri Lanka, the UN's official position was that the question of "cancelling" his trip to Sri Lanka or even the Wanni does not arise. That sounded as if it was devious diplomacy at its best.

Everything that happened last week was behind closed doors. Only senior UN officials and the Sri Lanka government were privy to the discussions. Asked for clarification, a UN spokesman said: "The only thing we can say officially is that we have no trip to announce to Sri Lanka. So unfortunately, I have no comment one way or another about this, although we're trying to get any details, if he does go to Sri Lanka."

The ostensible reason for the "cancellation" is that the Secretary-General is preoccupied with a new US resolution, which calls for the creation of a UN-mandated, multi-national peacekeeping force for Iraq.

But his proposed trip to Sri Lanka was part of a travel itinerary that included New Delhi, and most importantly Kuala Lumpur, where he was going to address the 54-nation Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC) which is expected to elect Malaysia as its new chairman.

Will the Iraq resolution also prompt Annan to cancel his trip to New Delhi and Kuala Lumpur? Stay tuned on that one. Meanwhile, the protocol-conscious UN erred once again when it designated Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe as "head of government" for the second year running in the UN's official list of speakers for the General Assembly sessions last week.

Since Sri Lanka and France are perhaps the only two countries in the world with non-executive prime ministers, the UN may be excused for erring once -- but not two successive years. Perhaps if Annan visited Sri Lanka, he may have apologised to President Chandrika Kumaratunga for goofing again.

But the UN Treaty Section was clear in its ruling when Sri Lanka signed the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control last week. Palitha Kohona, the Sri Lankan head of the UN Treaty Section, says that under the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties and customary international law, only a head of state, head of government or a foreign minister, could sign an international treaty.

If a non-executive prime minister is to sign a treaty, he says, that prime minister has to obtain "full powers" from either the head of state, head of government or the foreign minister.

Since President Kumaratunga was not in New York last week, Foreign Minister Tyronne Fernando signed the anti-smoking treaty.
At least, this time the UN got it right.

Back to Columns