How a translation error led to an international incident

On Saturday morning, Ban Ki-moon appeared to be breaking with five years of standing U.N. policy toward Sudan, telling two French news agencies in an interview that he would try to prevent Africa’s largest country from splitting into two nations in a 2011 referendum on independence for southern Sudan. "We’ll work hard to avoid a possible secession," the wire service Agence France Presse reported him saying.

Ban’s remarks were little noted in Washington, but they have set off a major international incident in Sudan, prompting Sudan’s southern leaders to accuse the secretary-general of interfering in the South’s decision to determine its own political future. Southern Sudan’s president, Salva Kiir Mayardit, wrote a letter this morning to Ban, saying his published remarks constituted "an erroneous description of the U.N.’s role as a guarantor" of the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement, which ended one of Africa’s bloodiest and longest civil wars, and offered southerners the right to vote on independence in January 2011. "I’m sure it was not your intention to depict the U.N.’s role in this manner," the letter reads.

Ban told the French reporters that he favors a unified Sudan, saying, "We will try to work hard to make this unity attractive." But he never said he would actively work actively to oppose it. AFP apparently mistranslated the English language interview in its first French version of the story, and then repeated the mistake in English. The actual quote was "Then we will work very closely — we will have to work very closely — not to have any negative consequences coming from this potential or possible secession."

The problem is that the story, which first appeared on the wires in French Saturday morning and in English in the early afternoon, has played out over the past three days in the international press, getting picked up by news agencies like the BBC and the Financial Times. The new head of the U.N.’s mission in Sudan, Haile Menkerios, has been on the phone with Salva Kiir during the past 24 hours trying to assure him Ban was misquoted. The U.N., meanwhile, only issued its first public denial this afternoon:

"In order to clarify erroneous reports about remarks attributed to the Secretary-General concerning Sudan, the Spokesperson for the Secretary-General would like to reaffirm the Secretary-General’s position, which is in accordance with the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) and the United Nations mandate in Sudan.

The Secretary-General made clear that the United Nations would work to support the parties in their efforts to "make unity attractive" as well as the exercise by the people of Southern Sudan of their right to self-determination in a referendum. In this connection, he made clear that that the United Nations would work to avoid any potential negative consequences following next year’s referendum.

Any suggestion that the United Nations may have taken a position that may prejudge the outcome of such a referendum is incorrect."