President Barack Obama briefs European leaders, including British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, European Union Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, and Danish Prime Minister Lars L. Rasmussen, following a multilateral meeting at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, Dec. 18, 2009. In the background, behind French and US presidents, Frenchs ministers, Jean-Louis Boorlo and Chantal Jouanno.
Climate-change summit results only in ‘voluntary’ accord
UNITED NATIONS â As United Nations chief Ban Ki-moon enters his third year in office, speculation is building inside the diplomatic corps that the former South Korean foreign minister may be finished in his leadership post when his term expires in November 2011.
While it is common for the organization’s secretary-general to seek a second term in the office, veteran diplomats tell WND that they have been disappointed with his performance.
Ban has yet to rein in the U.N. bureaucracy, which largely has ignored his attempts at fiscal constraints and staff downsizing.
Many of the issues surrounding Ban and his close-knit group of advisers became apparent at the recent Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen.
Though more than a year in planning, there were repeated reports of breakdowns at the summit that ran the gamut from logistical to political.
One African diplomat told WND he received reports that delegates to the summit were being subjected to “incredible price gouging” by the local businesses in Copenhagen.
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He added that the U.N. should have held the summit in Germany rather than Denmark:
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“The Germans would have been much better organized. We would not have had these problems in Germany.”
Along with the logistical snafus came political criticism.
Sudan’s deputy U.N. ambassador, leading a delegation of Third World nations, was incensed at the summit’s final document, which he felt slighted developing nations.
Lamumba Stanislaus-Kaw Di-Aping called the summit’s document “a holocaust” for developing nations.
“It is a solution based on the same values that funneled six million people in Europe into furnaces,” he said.
His boss, Ambassador Abdalmahmoud Mohamad, told reporters in New York that the Copenhagen Accord was akin to financial “apartheid” for developing nations.
Meanwhile, U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown told reporters he believed the summit was “hijacked” by a number of countries.
Yet Ban insisted the conclave was a success:
“The Copenhagen Accord marks a significant step forward,” he said.
The secretary-general also emphasized that the final agreement has financial support.
“The deal is backed by money and the means to deliver it You know that already $30 billion has been committed until 2012 and after that $100 billion annually up to 2020,” Ban said.
But just who will foot the bill is still unclear.
While the “obligations” arrived at in Copenhagen are voluntary, Ban says he will pressure the U.N. membership to change that:
“I will encourage them to directly engage in achieving a global legally binding climate change treaty in 2010,” he said.
No reaction was forthcoming from the U.S./U.N. mission or from Ambassador Susan Rice.
The White House, too, was silent.
But Ban also told reporters: “In Denmark, we got a way forward that pushes all countries to take action. It is not perfect at this time, but it was very important, essentially a very significant step forward.”
He admitted, however, that negotiations broke down late in the meeting.
“At the end of these negotiations, which were almost at a deadlock. ⦠I emphasized that we have come such a long way. We didn’t have time to lose and if we had to defer this to another negotiation process, then we would not be able to operationalize the financial support and technological support.”
The U.N. chief repeatedly avoided questions pertaining to reports that a number of summit officials were connected to several major corporations that stood to gain financial windfalls from climate related projects.
But he acknowledge he has a tough road ahead.
“That will be quite a big challenge for the United Nations and for world leaders all together,” he said.
U.N. officials rejected WND’s request for credentials to cover the Copenhagen events, then stood by the decision even though their stated reason for rejection was shown to be based on false information.
Media coordinator Axel Wuestenhagen told WND’s legal counsel, Gary Kreep, that WND, “as a for-profit subsidiary of the nonprofit Western Journalism Center,” did not qualify for media credentials. However, Joseph Farah, founder of both WND and the Western Journalism Center, confirmed WND was not a subsidiary of the WJC.
The dispute with WND over Copenhagen credentials ultimately prevented WND from covering the events firsthand.
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