In this week's UN Plaza, Matthew Lee and I discuss a range of issues before the United Nations. In the clip below, we stray from Somali piracy to the dispute over the an oil rich region of Sudan to violence in Kashmir.

In this week's edition of UN Plaza, I interview Ambassador James Dobbins, who after September 11 was tasked to be the American envoy to the Afghan resistance. We discuss his new book, After the Taliban: Nation Building in Afghanistan

Matthew Lee and I discuss Sarah Palin's forthcoming visit to the United Nations.

The United States foreign aid apparatus has not undergone a significant overhaul since the John F. Kennedy administration. In this edition of UN Plaza, I chat with Ray Offenheiser of Oxfam America about how we can bring US foreign assistance and foreign aid practices into the 21st century.

And don't miss Offenheiser's On Day One idea.

Matthew Lee and I cover a number of issues in our recent diavlog. In the segment below, we gab about the forthcoming UN Security Council elections.

The New York Times receives a leaked email from State Department spokesperson Richard Boucher to US-UN Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad in which Boucher excoriates Khalilzad for meeting with Pakistani Political leader Asif Ali Zardiri.

Mr. Khalilzad had spoken by telephone with Mr. Zardari, the leader of the Pakistan Peoples Party, several times a week for the past month until he was confronted about the unauthorized contacts, a senior United States official said. Other officials said Mr. Khalilzad had planned to meet with Mr. Zardari privately next Tuesday while on vacation in Dubai, in a session that was canceled only after Richard A. Boucher, the assistant secretary of state for South Asia, learned from Mr. Zardari himself that the ambassador was providing "advice and help."

"Can I ask what sort of 'advice and help' you are providing?" Mr. Boucher wrote in an angry e-mail message to Mr. Khalilzad. "What sort of channel is this? Governmental, private, personnel?" Copies of the message were sent to others at the highest levels of the State Department; the message was provided to The New York Times by an administration official who had received a copy.

Officially, the United States has remained neutral in the contest to succeed Mr. Musharraf, and there is concern within the State Department that the discussions between Mr. Khalilzad and Mr. Zardari, the widower of Benazir Bhutto, a former prime minister, could leave the impression that the United States is taking sides in Pakistan's already chaotic internal politics.

In an old UN Plaza Clip from February, Matthew Lee and I discuss some of these stories surrounding Khalilzad. As I say below, I really don't like to get into rumor mongering about Khalilzad's ambitions to be a foreign head of state.

Matthew Lee of Inner City Press walks us through the dueling Security Council resolutions on Georgia

In this edition of UN Plaza, Matthew and I discuss the Georgia-Russia drama at the Security Council. We also touch on my recent trip to Africa.

In this edition of UN Plaza, I speak with Kristele Younes of Refugees International about the Afghan refugee crisis.

In this edition of UN Plaza, Matthew Lee and I debate the merits of the International Criminal Court taking action against the president of Sudan, Omar el Bashir.

In which I speak with Jim Murphy, a British member of parliament, the UK Minster for Europe and UK Minister for Public Diplomacy--and blogger. In the conversation below, we discuss Minister Murphy's new book on public diplomacy, his take on the climate change debate in the United States, the Lisbon Treaty, and the prospect of Turkish ascension into the European Union.

In this segment of UN Plaza, Matthew Lee and I discuss the origins of American civic engagement on the Darfur conflict.

I was unable to tape a UN Plaza diavlog this week, but New York Sun national security reporter Eli Lake stepped up. In the segment below, Eli surprises by offering two reasons why American neoconservatives (like himself) should love the United Nations.

Good to see the neocons are on board! Next stop, libertarians.

In this edition of UN Plaza, I talk to Matthew Lee of Inner City Press about the Security Council's recent trip to Africa. Matthew accompanied the Council, and in the segment below he recounts what he considers French soft-pedaling on Chad.

As I argue later in the diavlog, one way to explain the difference between how Chad and Sudan are dealt with by the Council is the fact that unlike Sudan, no member state has accused Chad of committing genocide.

In this edition of UN Plaza, I chat with Dr. Joel Selaniko, co-founder of the non-profit Datadyne, which distributes mobile phones to public health workers in sub-Saharan Africa. Using special open-source software adapted for the mobile phones, health workers are able to keep track of vaccination campaigns and outbreaks in real time. Selanikio explains:

In this week's UN Plaza, I chat with Matthew Lee who was traveling with the Security Council through Africa. We caught up at his layover in Khartoum.

In the segment below Matthew describes a government-sponsored field trip to Omdurman, where last month Darfur rebels clashed with government forces.

In this week's UN Plaza, I interview Richard Dicker, Director of the International Justice Program at Human Rights Watch. Richard is an expert on the International Criminal Court and in the diavlog we discuss and debate the relative merits of the court. In the segment below, Richard explains the significance of the recent arrest of Jean-Pierre Bemba, a former Congolese Vice President and Militia Leader. Bemba was arrested outside his wife's home in Brussels last week and is now awaiting extradition to the Hague. As Richard explains, this is a very important development for the court.

In this week's UN Plaza, Matthew Lee and I discuss the "gold for guns" allegations in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ban's diplomacy in Myanmar, the chaos in Sudan, and hopeful trends in Nepal. In the segment below, we chat about recent elections to the Human Rights Council.

In this edition of UN Plaza, I welcome Enough Campaign policy analyst Julia Speigel back to the program. We discuss her recent trip to Northern Uganda, where she monitored last month's peace talks between the government of Uganda and the rebel Lord's Resistance Army.

The peace talks stalled at the last minute when rebel leader Joseph Kony failed to show up to the signing ceremony. In the clip below, Julia discusses how the international community might pressure Kony to come back to the table. You can also read her excellent report on how to revive the peace process in Northern Uganda.

In this segment of UN Plaza, Matthew Lee and I discuss the UN's response to the unfolding humanitarian crisis in Burma.

In this segment, Matthew Lee speculates that speculators have had a hand in the rapid increase in food prices. Mathew explains:

In an interview with Campus Progress, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Samantha Power asks a very pertinent question -- and provides an impressively on-the-mark answer that bears repetition:

What is the United Nations? The United Nations is going to reflect the priorities of those 192 [member] countries. We've got to get some number of those countries to take 21st century challenges seriously. Then you'll see the United Nations as an organization follow suit.

It won't work to start by saying, "Oh, the United Nations needs to take failing states, repression, and genocide seriously." That's like saying a building needs to take certain things seriously. The United Nations will start taking those thing seriously when the member states within it reallocate resources appropriately.

One of those member states, of course -- and the one best positioned to provide resources for the UN's ambitious endeavors -- is the United States. Yet the U.S., instead of providing the support that would help the UN achieve its goals, deeply underfunds the world body and even chastises it for not taking stronger action on crises like Darfur.

If you haven't read Power's new book yet -- which, as she describes it, is about not just the United Nations, but about how citizens and governments address complicated global challenges -- then I strongly urge you to check it out.

In this week's edition of UN Plaza, I speak with filmmaker Lisa Jackson, whose documentary The Greatest Silence: Rape in the Congo premiered on HBO this week.

In this week's UN Plaza, former US Ambassador to the United Nations Thomas Pickering discusses his New York Review of Books article in which he and co-authors William Luers and Jim Walsh propose a sensible diplomatic solution to the Iranian nuclear stand-off. In the segment below, Ambassador Pickering explains why bombing Iran is a terrible, terrible alternative.

In this week's UN Plaza, Matthew Lee and I cover a host of issues, including francophones at the UN, Northern Uganda, and circumstances surrounding the assassination attempt on East Timor president Jose Ramos Horta. In the segment below, we discuss Ban's recently released report on Somalia.

Parag Khanna, author of Second Word: Empires and Influence in the New Global Order stops by UN Plaza this week. In the segment below, Parag explains why developing countries of the second world are the "swing states" of the 21st century.

NPR's All Things Considered, in a report entitled "U.N. Returns to Baghdad in Force," provides a welcome look into the hard work undertaken by the hundreds of personnel -- both foreign and domestic -- serving the United Nations in Iraq. The "return" of the report's title refers to the aftermath of the August 2003 suicide bombing -- one of the first of the insurgency -- that destroyed the UN mission's base and killed 22 of its staff, including the mission's head, veteran diplomat Sergio Vieira de Mello (about whom Samantha Power has just published an insightful book). NPR correspondent Anne Garrels interviews the Secretary-General's current Special Representative in Iraq, Staffan de Mistura, and highlights some of the UN's unheralded successes in Iraq.

These successes include: delaying the referendum on the city of Kirkuk, which, if conducted too early, would likely have only exacerbated volatile ethnic tensions; helping the Iraqi government design the structure with which to use its oil money (a luxury not enjoyed by most countries in which the UN operates); and preparing for the upcoming regional elections, which local Iraqis, largely dissatisfied with their regional governments, are eagerly awaiting.

In discussions of Iraq, the UN's triumphs often fall to the wayside during the protracted skirmishes of American politics: endless debates over troop withdrawal, the effects of "the surge," or the cost of the U.S. occupation. With the UN mandate set to expire at the end of the year, though, its role in Iraq -- operating with relatively few personnel, on a budget dwarfed by that of U.S. forces, and enduring persistently dangerous security conditions -- deserves considered appreciation.

The NPR report affirms one of the central benefits of the UN's presence in Iraq: its neutrality. de Mistura is confident that many Iraqis welcome the UN because they "feel that [it is] neutral and impartial" and "can provide them with advice in areas they are not familiar with or competent [in]." At the same time, he recognizes that this sentiment is not universal among Iraqis, and acknowledges the sobering effect of the 2003 bombing, after which, he says, UN personnel arrived at the stark conclusion that their blue flag of impartiality would not necessarily protect them from the determinedly violent segments of the population.

Nonetheless, the UN has achieved many tangible successes in Iraq. Its neutrality is perhaps even more important, though, as UN staff, even if still constrained by appalling levels of violence, are unhindered by bias or partisan rancor back home, and can work alongside Iraqis to help rebuild their war-shattered country.

In this installment of UN Plaza, Ambassador Thomas Pickering discusses his new article in Survival in which the former UN Ambassador explores the possibility of a greater UN role in Iraq.

In this installment of Blogging Heads, Matthew Lee and I discuss the collapsing peacekeeping mission in Eritrea

Ed Morrissey, AKA Captain Ed of Captain's Quarters (now, at Hot Air) and I discuss conservative hostility toward the UN. In this segment, we take a look at the UN and IAEA's track record on North Korea and Iran.

In the latest edition of UN Plaza, the Enough Project's Julia Spiegel discusses the conflict in Northern Uganda, from where she recently returned. In this segment, Spiegel offers a smart background on the conflict, and introduces viewers to Joseph Kony, the murderous, child abducting leader of the Lord's Resistance Army.

Matthew Lee and I discuss George Clooney's recent visit to UN Headquarters.

Jonny Goldstein, proprietor of Jonny's Par-tay, a live video webcast program, invited me to be his guest on tomorrow's show. Jonny specializes in new media issues and he asked me to talk a bit about blogging about the UN, as well as some of UN Dispatch's partners such as On Day One and Nothing But Nets. The format looks quite innovative as viewers have the opportunity to write in and ask questions during the show. Tune at 9 pm EST.

On UN Plaza this week, Scott Paul of The Washington Note and Citizens for Global Solutions explains why the US Senate should ratify the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. Click here to tell your senator to support ratification.

In this installment of UN Plaza on BloggingHeads.TV, Matthew Lee and I discuss Turtle Bay's reaction to the Bhutto assassination.

In the latest installment of BloggingHeads' UN Plaza series, I interview Mark Vlasic, a former prosecuting attorney at the war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. In this brief clip, Mark explains why war future criminals should beware.

In this installment of BloggingHeads, Matthew Lee and I discuss the top 10 UN stories of the year. Below, we take a look at Ban's first year as Secretary General. I make the point that Ban--to his great credit--is becoming "the climate change Secretary General." Watch!

Blogging Heads just launched a new series that examines foreign policy through the prism of the United Nations and other international institutions. In the debut, I interview the Enough Project's John Prendergast about peacekeeping in the Horn of Africa. Below, Prendergast discusses the state of play of the peace process in Darfur and offers elements of what an "all Sudan solution" might look like.

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