TAKEOVER AT UN: HUMANITARIAN ADVOCACY, A CARDINAL PRIORITY, NOW TAKES ON A LOW-KEY HUE

In the end, Sir John Holmes could not contain his exasperation at last week\'s press conference in Nairobi . \"You don\'t seem to be interested in the humanitarian situation in Somalia,\" he told journalists. The United Nations Under-Secretary-General and Humanitarian Coordinator had just flown in from Mogadishu, the first high-level UN official to visit the city in 14 years. But the journalists were treated to an astonishingly bland and low-key presentation of the fraught humanitarian challenges faced by the hundreds of thousands of Somalis who have been prevented by the authorities from receiving desperately-needed assistance, writes Salim Lone, a columnist for the Daily Nation in Kenya, the Guardian (UK), BBC and Al Jazeera Holmes\' presentation did not contain any criticism of the Ethiopian army and the Transitional Federal Government which are the principal perpetrators of atrocities against civilians, some of which have been committed by the insurgents as well. Even more amazing was his decision not to meet with the Ethiopians who run the show in Somalia or even the elders of clans whose civilians have suffered so heavily. One would never have guessed Holmes was arriving from a city that was gripped by unspeakable carnage and had been leveled like Grozny by bombs and heavy artillery raining on densely-populated civilian areas, and that victims of the war were still dying primarily because of restrictions placed on humanitarian access by the authorities. No wonder he was not peppered with questions about the humanitarian crisis.