The Cable goes inside the U.N. Security Council
This afternoon, the United Nations Security Council will hold its one and only formal session of the week and the U.S. delegation is entitled to bring one reporter with them to report on the event from inside the chamber itself. They’ve chosen none other than your humble Cable guy. That’s right, The Cable will be ...
This afternoon, the United Nations Security Council will hold its one and only formal session of the week and the U.S. delegation is entitled to bring one reporter with them to report on the event from inside the chamber itself. They’ve chosen none other than your humble Cable guy.
That’s right, The Cable will be in the room with Ambassador Susan Rice and a host of heads of state and heads of government from the other 14 Security Council member countries. The subject of the high level event is preventive diplomacy. It is the only event in the Security Council this week’s U.N. General Assembly. The meeting will be chaired by the President of Lebanon Michel Sleiman. Other heads of state in attendance will be Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Colombia, Gabon, Nigeria and South Africa. Portugal will be represented by its prime minister, while the remaining council members will be represented at the level of foreign minister.
At a Security Council session last July, the secretary-general presented a report that describes the relevance of preventive diplomacy across the conflict spectrum and as part of broader, nationally owned strategies to promote peace. At today’s session, Security Council members will discuss the report and address such questions as: How can the Security Council strengthen its role in preventive diplomacy? How can the sources of tension and potential conflict be more readily identified and acted upon? How can peacekeeping missions be built on in order to mitigate the effects of conflicts and prevent their spread? How can the requirements of preventive diplomacy be reconciled with the prerogatives of State sovereignty when they appear to conflict?
And as with any U.N. event where there are open microphones, who knows what other topics could be raised…
We’ll be covering this event here on The Cable and also tweeting from inside the Security Council chamber in real time (@joshrogin).
Josh Rogin covers national security and foreign policy and writes the daily Web column The Cable. His column appears bi-weekly in the print edition of The Washington Post. He can be reached for comments or tips at josh.rogin@foreignpolicy.com.
Previously, Josh covered defense and foreign policy as a staff writer for Congressional Quarterly, writing extensively on Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantánamo Bay, U.S.-Asia relations, defense budgeting and appropriations, and the defense lobbying and contracting industries. Prior to that, he covered military modernization, cyber warfare, space, and missile defense for Federal Computer Week Magazine. He has also served as Pentagon Staff Reporter for the Asahi Shimbun, Japan's leading daily newspaper, in its Washington, D.C., bureau, where he reported on U.S.-Japan relations, Chinese military modernization, the North Korean nuclear crisis, and more.
A graduate of George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs, Josh lived in Yokohama, Japan, and studied at Tokyo's Sophia University. He speaks conversational Japanese and has reported from the region. He has also worked at the House International Relations Committee, the Embassy of Japan, and the Brookings Institution.
Josh's reporting has been featured on CNN, MSNBC, C-Span, CBS, ABC, NPR, WTOP, and several other outlets. He was a 2008-2009 National Press Foundation's Paul Miller Washington Reporting Fellow, 2009 military reporting fellow with the Knight Center for Specialized Journalism and the 2011 recipient of the InterAction Award for Excellence in International Reporting. He hails from Philadelphia and lives in Washington, D.C. Twitter: @joshrogin
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