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Inner City Press
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• At UN, Salva Kiir Speaks on Sudan, Uganda and LRA's Otti Mystery
  Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at the UN: News Analysis UNITED NATIONS, November 6 -- Salva Kiir, first vice president of South Sudan, began his trip to the U.S. with a UN stop on Tuesday. He met with Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and then spoke to the press. Aside from two mysterious answers he was generally upbeat, saying that just has he built bridges between Eritrea and the National Congress Party of Omar al-Bashir, he aims to do the same between al-Bashir and George W. Bush. ("I hope so," Sudan's Ambassador to the UN Abdalmahmood Abdalhaleem Mohamad said with a smile when asked later about this comment by Inner City Press.) He said, in Arabic, that he has high hopes to get the Comprehensive Peace Agreement back on track upon his return to Sudan. On Darfur, he urged the rebel movements to re-unify, adopt a common negotiation position and a single delegation to what the UN has been calling the third and final stage of the talks in Sirte, Libya. Inner City Press asked Kiir, in his trademark black cowboy hat, about the Lord's Resistance Army's talks with Ugandan president Museveni, and the International Criminal Court's indictments of Joseph Kony, Vincent Otti and two other LRA leaders. Kiir said that there is almost peace in Uganda, that an LRA delegation is in Kampala, and that if a peace agreement is signed, "the local community" will ask the ICC to drop the indictments. Not addressed is whether the ICC could, should or would accept such a request, based on alternative local arrangements. Salva Kiir in U.S. in trademark black hat, Vincent Otti not shown Inner City Press asked Kiir directly if he know if Vincent Otti is alive. There are reports that Otti is dead; some of these reports say that Joseph Kony killed him. Kiir said these are rumors, that someone can be sick and them become restored. Video here. While there was some laughter at the press stakeout at this line, a source with knowledge of the LRA process, Kiir and Northern Uganda tells Inner City Press that the answer only gives more credence to the reports of Otti's demise. We'll see. The other mystery in Kiir's answers concerned non-Sudanese now in Darfur. Kiir said there are "foreigners" in Darfur, brought there by the National Congress Party. He was asked, who are they? Not necessarily from Chad, Kiir said. Mysteries, mysteries...
• Behind Lockheed's No-Bid UN Contract, State Department Timing, DynCorp, Dissent
  
  Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at the UN: Exclusive
  
  UNITED NATIONS, November 2 -- Documents obtained by Inner City Press reveal substantial disagreement inside the UN before a no-bid $250 million contract was given to U.S.-based military contractor Lockheed Martin, through its subsidiary Pacific Architects & Engineers, for the upcoming Darfur peacekeeping mission. Contrary to defense that have since been offered for the sole source process with Lockheed, that it was an unavoidable emergency triggered by the Security Council's July 31 resolution on the peacekeeping mission, and only Lockheed could provide the infrastructure services, numerous UN officials internally urged competitive bidding.
  
  Documents show that the decision to go sole-source with Lockheed was made as far back as April, three months before the Council resolution, based on a request by the chief of the UN's Department of Field Support, Jane Holl Lute. Click here for Ms. Lute's April 19 request and UN Controller Warren Sach's April 25 approval, which urged that any "follow on arrangements will be executed until established procurement procedures and rules" and that "DPKO develop a logistics concept no later than three months to respond to emergency situations of this nature to prevent reoccurrence of exceptions to competitive bidding." Contrary to Mr. Sach's proviso, more than five months later, a no-bid contract was given to Lockheed, outside of established procurement procedures.
  
              The reason for the second round of rushing, it now appears, went beyond the Security Council's July 31 resolution. Lockheed's contract with the U.S. Department of State was expiring on August 31, and that day the UN's Headquarters Committee on Contracts met on "an urgency reported by Procurement Services and the Department of Field Support... involving an award of a contract for the provision of the multi-function logistics services in Darfur." See Minutes, obtained exclusively by Inner City Press and now online here.  According to the Minutes:
  
  "The Committee questioned the terms of the PAE contract with the US State Department (USDOS). In response, Procurement Services stated that they are given to understand that the contract with PAE is expiring at midnight today (31 August). They are also given to understand that a new bidding exercise is at the concluding stage with DynCorp and PAE as the two finalists vying for the new contract." (Page 4)
              The U.S. State Department had been criticized, including by U.S. government auditors, for lack of competition in giving its Darfur camp services contract to Lockheed's PAE. Therefore the USDOS has put it out to bid, and had another finalist, DynCorp (which has its own contracting issues with the U.S.). But Lockheed was able, despite the GAO criticism, to keep getting paid in Darfur on a sole-source basis, by being selected by the UN without bidding for the infrastructure contract. The Minute reflect substantial questioning and criticism of the process, and even a dissenting opinion, based on a lack of "comparators to the agreed price" and "overhead charged by PAE on airfield related services." Click here.  As the controversial nature of the approval, however qualified, to eschew competitive bidding for this contract because more clear, the participants decided to in essence further immunize themselves by convincing Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to issue an October 2 letter waiving the applicability of procurement and other rules to the Darfur peacekeeping mission.
  
              Ban's letter and its reasoning have been sited by defenders of the contract, notably from the Mission to the UN of the United Kingdom and of the U.S.. As reported, the U.S. Mission's spokesman on November 1 said that if there were irregularities beyond "innuendo" concerning the no-bid awarding of the Darfur contract to Lockheed, the U.S. would be the first ones to demand more transparency. That time has come.
  
              The August 31 Contract Committee Minutes also "note that the US Government has a contract with PAE for the provision of these kinds of good and services. The Committee was informed that the Procurement Service... had not been able to obtain all the prices under that contract from the US Government. The Committee opined that such prices could have been used as a benchmark. The Committee was not informed of the reasons why the US Government would not share such prices with the UN."
              These documents and others more generally lead some to see the involvement of the U.S. State Department, perhaps not through its formal Mission to the UN, as involved in the timing and no-bid awarding of the Darfur contract to Lockheed Martin. Others point to the hands-on involvement of the UN procurement official put in charge of the so-called "Darfur Team," Dmitri Dovgopoly. These sources say that Dovgopoly remains in touch, including by cell phone, with disgraced and convicted UN procurement official Alexander Yakovlev, who pled guilty among other things to soliciting bribes from contractors in the UN Oil for Food scandal.
  
              The day after the UN contract with Lockheed was announced, Inner City Press asked Ban Ki-moon why it had been done without competition. Mr. Ban said that it had been an emergency triggered by the tight timelines in the Security Council's July 31 resolution, but vowed that the UN would be transparent about the contract. But Ban's spokesperson then reversed course and said that the contract will not be made public. It is in this context that Inner City Press is putting online the Headquarters Contract Committee meeting minutes and the Lute - Sach correspondence of April, putting the sole-source process in place, with a three month time limit, well before the Council's July 31 resolution, and five months before Lockheed got its $250 million no-bid contract. The time for more transparency has come. Watch this site.
  
• UN Under Fire From Its Experts, on Torture, Executions and Peacekeeping Standards
  
  Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at the UN: News Analysis
  
  UNITED NATIONS, October 29 -- The UN itself may be engaged or complicit in extra-judicial executions, the UN's special rapporteur on the topic has told Inner City Press. Concerns about the UN's own practices were echoed by the rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights while countering terrorism. On Friday, law professor Philip Alston told journalists that he limits his inquiries to execution cases that are not being effectively investigated by the responsible authorities. Inner City Press asked Prof. Aston if, given that the UN sys