 U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon |
NEW YORK – United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon meets President Barack Obama today for the first time, and the visit is mired in controversy.
The meeting in the Oval Office has been almost two months in the making.
The curious relationship between the U.S. leader and the U.N. chief began last November.
According to Ban, an attempt to congratulate the new president-elect with a personal telephone call was made the day after Obama won the White House.
“I left a call-back number,” a somewhat surprised secretary-general told reporters.
It took Obama several days to return the call.
Ban later followed up with a pro-forma letter of congratulations.
Neither the U.N. nor the White House would disclose the contents.
“It’s personal and we don’t want to release its contents,” explained Ban spokeswoman Michelle Montas.
Montas waved off comparisons to several of Ban’s predecessors, including Javier Peres de Cuellar and Kofi Annan, who made public their letters of congratulations to George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.
In mid-January, Ban told reporters at U.N. headquarters that he “intended” to travel to D.C. the week of Jan. 26 to meet and greet the new president.
What happened that week, instead, was a rushed meeting with the newly minted U.S. ambassador to the U.N., Susan Rice.
Rice, who had been confirmed by the Senate just days earlier, officially presented Ban with her credentials.
After a brief photo op, the two proceeded into a 45-minute private meeting to “review” issues of “mutual interest.”
Ban later told reporters he would not be traveling to Washington as previously announced. The secretary-general would only say that Obama “was busy” and that the two would meet at some “unspecified” future date.
Montas, attempting to elaborate on Ban’ s statement, could only add that Obama was “pre-occupied with the economy.”
However, during the period in question, Obama found time to invite the UK and Japanese prime ministers to the Oval Office and to travel to Ottawa to huddle with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also “was too busy” to see Ban on a recent visit to New York City.
U.N. chiefs Annan and Peres de Cuellar were among the first foreign dignitaries received at the White House by George H.W. Bush, Clinton and George W. Bush shortly after they took office.
Peres de Cuellar was among the VIPs invited to the inauguration of George H.W. Bush in 1989.
Late last week, the White House decided to break the ice and finally invite Ban to the Oval Office.
The meeting was not anticipated by the U.N., which had to cut short a previously planned high-profile visit by Ban and Bill Clinton to Haiti scheduled for the same week.
Even odder was the fact that the White House, which normally makes announcements about foreign dignitaries visiting the Oval Office, left it to the American U.N. mission in New York to make the announcement. The only presidential notice on the Ban meeting came in a brief scheduling note to reporters last night.
Obama’s delay in meeting the U.N. secretary-general is the longest since the days of Jimmy Carter’s administration, records show.
And after almost two months in office, Rice has not scheduled any meeting with the U.N. press corps.
Her four predecessors all met the press shortly after arriving in New York.
To date, Rice has held only one brief off-the-record lunch with a small group of selected reporters.
More than 100 members of the U.N. press corps have since been left to wonder when and if they will get to see the new U.S. representative.
“We are working on it,” is all U.S. mission spokeswoman Carolyn Vadino would say.
Jonathan Sanders, a Columbia University professor who blogs on U.N. affairs, summed it up this way: “On Ban, I would give him a “C”; on Susan Rice, I would give her an “Incomplete.”
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