Alright, I can’t find the article that said that France didn’t want to hear about Ban Ki Moon – have I dreamt it? – so inbetween I’ll post the one about Ban leading the pack…

Preparing Kofi Annan’s succession at the UN

Candidates from India and South Korea have better chances to succeed the Ghanean.

The succession of the Secretary Genral of the UN, Kofi Annan, is now open. His second five-year mandate will end on December 31. Despite the wishes of John Bolton, the iconoclast US ambassador, to forego the unwritten rule to rotate geographically, the consensus of designing this time around an Asian remains.

There are four declared candidates: UN’s under-secretary for communication, Shashi Tharoor, from India; the South Korean State Secretary, Ban Ki-Moon; Jayantha Dhanapala, a sri-lankan diplomat and UN’s Under-Secretary-General for Disarmament Affairs¹; and finally Thailand’s Vice-Premier, Surakiart Sathirathai. Although the latter has been campaigning for about a year, he is still called in New York “the Thai”, which tells volumes on his chances and on how difficult to memorize his name is.

The election shold be held end of September or early October. How does one campaign for this job? A candidate started touring capital cities, so the other candidates had to do the same, says Shashi Tharoor in jest. He was officially presented as a candidate by India in June. UN regional groups have held special meetings to hear the candidates. This adds an element of transparency to proceedings held behind closed doors, comments Tharoor, in perfect French; Paris insists that the Secretary General, whoerver he may be, must be able to work in French).

The UN Charter says that the Secretary General is elected by the 192 member states, upon recommendation from the Security Council, which five permanent members have a veto right. Some countries have complained that the selection process by the Security Council is rather opaque, but this year, efforts toward transparency were made, says Edward Luck, professor at Columbia U. and former consultant for the reform if the UN.

Straw poll every month

This was started under the initiative of Jean-Marc de la Sablière, France’s ambassador: building on the bad memories left by the election of Boutros Boutros-Ghali in 1991, France offered to help channel the selection process. Every month a straw poll is organized, with three options: encourage the candidate to proceed, advise he drops out, or no opinion. The result of this secret ballot only has advisory value.

The first poll was organized on July 24, each Security Council member receiving, to preserve secrecy, an identical pen. Ambassador Bolton is said to have handed it back at the end of the vote, doing my bit for the UN budget [dda: jackass]. The results of the vote, supposedly secret, were rapidly known. This doesn’t surprise me in the least, Bolton said mirthfully.

South Korea’s Ban Ki Moon led the poll: 12 of the 15 members of the Security Council encouraged him to proceed with his campaign. Next came UN’s Shashi Tharoor, with ten votes. Surakiart and Dhanapala only received seven and five votes for, respectively. However, it is hard to make any guess from this vote, and permanent members have a veto right.

Last minute candidate?

Two votes encouraged Shashi Tharoor to drop out of the race. Was one of them from the US, which find the Indian too close to Kofi Annan to their taste? John Bolton refused to say whether he had a favorite. At this point, it would be tantamount to a death kiss. Like the French Ambassador, Bolton mentioned the possibility that new candidates could still come forward. This procedure looked more like a call for candidature than anything else, joked a diplomat. But so far, no other candidate has shown up.

This doesn’t exclude a last-minute surprise, explains Edward Luck. In 1991, Boutros-Ghali was one of the last candidates to go public, he recalls. Among the potentials are: Goh Chok Tong, Singapore’s former Premier, who could receive the support of other South-East Asian countries, would Surakiart Sathirathai step down.

There have been rumors also of Turkey’s Kemal Dervis, Administrator of the United Nation Development Programme – UNDP; Prince Zeid al-Hussein, ambassador of Jordan to the UN; and even an Estearn Europe candidate, like former Poland President Aleksander Kwaśniewski Latvia’s President Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga.

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¹: That’s inaccurate: United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan announced today the appointment of Nobuaki Tanaka of Japan as the new Under-Secretary-General for Disarmament Affairs, succeeding Nobuyasu Abe, effective 6 April 2006. He used to be Under-Secretary-General in re-establishing the Department of Disarmament he held this post from 1998-2003. Make that former Under-Secretary…

In Le Figaro’s latest, which I’ll translate in full in a wee bit, we can read the following, a very interesting tidbit indeed:

This 40 year-old engineer seemed well integrated in the French expat microcosm. Last May, he had played the role of a police inspector [dda: Mwahahahahahahaha] in an amateur theather play, Le noir te va si bien…, ie “Black suits you so well…” As for Véronique, she was a kindergarten assistant for 3rd year kids at the French school.

Something felt wrong. Very. Then I searched the archives of this blog. Hmmph. On August 12, I translated the following:

Today, Sorae village, where the couple resides, is abuzz with curiosity: I went through the directory of the French school, and I still couldn’t find who they were., declares a resident of this neighbourhood, dubbed “Little France”. This French couple apparently managed to live away from the French community that surrounded them.

So apparently, since the author/contributor of both articles are the same people [Anne-Charlotte De Langhe, with Aurore Skelton in Seoul], either they write copy as they take their morning crap, ie don’t look too closely, open wide and let go, or they’ve been bullshitted to and are pretending they never noticed. If the dudine in Seoul went to Pangbae-dong and interviewed people [at least one…] and she was told, Nope, the directory doesn’t list these people while not only they have two school-age kids, but the mother works at the French school, do you expect us to really believe that the name ‘Courjault’ is not listed there?

My take is that they circled the wagons and hoped the problem would go away… Fat chance!

Update: the full translation

Frozen babies: the Korean case file in limbo

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Orléans DA’s office can’t do anything without a copy of the case file of the South Korean police, which has concentrated its investigation on Véronique Courjault.

The investigation stalls, while the mystery thickens: in Seoul and Tours the “frozen babies case” have people abuzz. More than a month after the investigation started in Korea, the elements that would help explain the gory discovery of two newborns in a freezer, at the house of French expats, are scarce. While Seoul investigators emphasize their suspicsions on Véronique Courjault, the French justice system is still waiting for more details.

Indeed, Orléans’ DA¹ office hopes to receive soon a full copy of the South Korean case file. AMond this file, the results of the DNA tests, designing the French couple as the parents of the babies. The case file is being translated, said DA Sylvie Pantz, but this could take some time. The objective is to go as fast as possible, in order to avoid degradation of evidence. Defrozen for autopsy, the babies, which hold the key to this mystery, are being preserved in Seoul.

Meanwhile. the South Korean police’s demand of interrogating Véronique Courjault is becoming more and more vocal, as she is believed to be the mother of the babies, and thus suspected of infanticide. Chances thath she is not the mother are exactly nil, an investigator in Seoul recently declared, relying his opinion on the results of the test done at the National Institute of Scientific Investigations.

These results are contested by Véronique Courjault, 39. A first series of tests, based on samples taken from their Seoul lhome [hairs, ear swabs] had confirmed that the Courjaults were the parents of the dead babies. These results were confirmed in a second series of tests made on samples taken from the woman during a surgical procedure done on December 13, 2003.

A letter to French expats in Seoul

According to South Korean investigators, Véronique Courjault underwent hysterectomy [removal of the uterus] in a clinic somewhere near Seoul three years ago. This was required, according to the police, because the placenta inside her uterus was decomposing. Last week, the French press had reported about this emergency procedure, but Véronique Courjault had stated that it was following an infection whose origin was never determined. Seoul remains convinced that the suspect gave birth to the babies outside medical facilities.

The case started on July 23, when Jean-Louis Courjault, back in Seoul for an unscheduled business meeting, discovered the two babies in his freezer. He reported the discovery to the police, and was allowed to go back to France.

Hunkering down in Touraine, the Courjaults will not go back today to their Sorae village home, as was scheduled. In a letter sent to the French community in Seoul, Jean-Louis Courjault insists on their innocence, and asks to be remembered as an open person. [dda: Duh. Even if you hadn’t cryogenized babies, you wouldn’t be remembered at all 3 weeks after your departure. That’s the way it goes there… Of course, with this scandal, you might be remembered a little longer!].

This 40 year-old engineer seemed well integrated in the French expat microcosm. Last May, he had played the role of a police inspector [dda: Mwahahahahahahaha!] in an amateur theather play, Le noir te va si bien…, ie “Black suits you so well…” As for Véronique, she was a kindergarten assistant for 3rd year kids at the French school. Today, nothing can force her to go back to the job. Not even French law.

As soon as they receive the case file, French prosecutors will build their own case, with their own evidence and tests, Marc Morin, the Courjaults’ lawyer insisted. I will be satisfied with the evidence the day a French coroner does an autopsy of the babies in Korea, Orléans DA Sylvie Pantz stated. And when he tells me how the babies died.

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¹ For the convenience of our American readers, I am borrowing US terminology. Avocat Général == D.A. [District Attorney], Procureur == ADA [Assistant DA], etc… Note that since there’s no Federal government here, all French prosecutors are indeed the equivalent of the Feds. Orléans being a large city, they have a DA. Tours, the closest city to the Courjault’s abode, is not only smaller but also in the same region, and thus only has an ADA – and minions of course. So while the first interview involved the Tours ADA and coppers, note that now the DA herself has taken on the case. Pulling ranks and all that.

Same goes for the police, which usually refers in French to the national police, as City Hall’s cops in France are usually nothing more than dignified rent-a-cops in charge of parking tickets and opening and closing public gardens. Our UK friends can replace DA with procurator fiscal.

Korea, Courjault, Frozen Babies

The latest from Le Figaro. The evil plot from the evil, devious slanty yellows had already been mentioned, but now they’re all for it. Sure…

Frozen babies: the couple refuses to go back to Korea

The Courjaults, in their first public statement, insist they are innocent, and the victims of a “media lynching” in Seoul.

Will French justice be able to solve the “frozen babies” mystery? A French couple, expatriates in Seoul, are implicated in a scandal, whereby the bodies of two newborns were discovered late july in their freezer.

For the first time, the – according to the Korean investigators – prime suspects have accepted to participate to a press conference, at their lawyer’s offices in Tours. What we do know, Jean-Louis Courjault insisted, is that we are not the parents of these babies.

This 40 year-old engineer, living in Seoul since 2002 with his family, admits he is living a real nightmare. He summarized the case for the press: On July 23, I have discovered two newborns in the freezer at our Seoul appartment. I called the police, collaborated with them, and then was allowed to fly back to France, on schedule. On July 30, I learned that the DNA tests [LF: done in Korea] designated me as the father of the babies. On August 7 [dda’s birthday ], we were told that further DNA tests implied that my wife was the mother.

In late July, Jean-Louis Courjault had to interrupt his holidays in the south of France and go back to Korea for business reasons. He informed himself the police about the discovery: two bodies, identified as males newborns, and wrapped in plastic bages, were stored in the freezer, in their Sorae Village residence. According to Korean investigators, the babies are not twins, and the death of the babies would date back eight months or more.

Since, Véronique and Jean-Louis Courjault have been protesting their innocence. We have tried several times, fruitlessly, to reach the police attaché at the Korean embassy in Paris, explains Mr. Courjault. We can’t understand the results of the DNA tests and recuse the results of this investigation. Following a preliminary investigation by Tours prosecutors, the Courjaults were interviewed as witnesses, at their request, by the police. Apart from this interview, Mr Marc Morin, their lawyer, added, the French case file is empty.

A plot with industrial motives

It is quite difficult to lift the shadows that surround this case. Véronique Courjault confirmed that she underwent an emergency procedure in Korea, in 2003, following an infection whose origin was never explained. Which explains, her husband added, why his wife couldn’t have babies during these years. According to their lawyer, anything is possible. [dda: Duuuuhhhh]. Even a plot with industrial motivations can’t be excluded, says J.L. Courjault. Employed by the local branch of an American automotive equipment company, in charge of technology transfers, in a very competitive market, this engineer could have been framed. Moreover, he adds, my unscheduled return to Korea could have interrupted someone, involved in something.” [dda: Better have some scuba diving equipment, cuz you’re deep-sea fishing m’dear]. A set of keys is said to have disappeared during their absence.

The victims of a true media lynching in Korea, and completey overwhelmed by this affait, Véronique and Jean-Louis Courjault have decided to stay in France and fight. They remain at the disposal of the French justice system, they now want to live in peace [dda: no newsies anymore, fanks], with their two children, in their Touraine residence.

Korea, Courjault, Frozen Babies

Short snippet today after a few days of silence. Let’s see now what the French justice system will do [prolly nothing for 10 years then who knows?]. In today’s paper there is a lengthier article about a murder case in Belgium, where two French brothers are the suspected murderers. One’s in jail – despite the interdiction to leave France he crossed the French-Belgian border – and the other brother was judged in absentia. When Brussels asked France for its arrest and deportation, France tried the case [10 years after the fact], and concluded “not guilty”. However, the court also acted on the European arrest warrant, and had Olivier Denoyelle deported to Bruges, where he was arrested and thrown in jail for 16 years… So yeah apparently France does deport its citizens.

A French woman wanted for interrogation in Seoul

JUSTICE South Korean police indicated yesterday that it was about to officially request Paris the right to interrogate Véronique Courjault, the French woman suspected of infanticide, after the discovery, end of July, of two dead babies in the freezer of a French family in Seoul. The results of a second series of DNA tests, published yesterday, would confirm that this woman is indeed the mother of the babies.

Korea, Courjault, Frozen Babies, Olivier Denoyelle

References:
Le Figaro
Chrystelle Vincent