MARION ELLMAN LOOKED around the horseshoe-shaped table in the middle of the UN Security Council chamber. Seventeen ambassadors were seated there, including herself. Set back from the table, the spectator seats within the chamber were largely filled with African diplomats waiting to see which way the vote would go. Ellman herself had no idea.
It had taken almost two months to get here. Tom Knowles’ idea of starting the operation against the LRA within a few weeks had sounded fine until the military planners got to work. The government of Uganda didn’t need UN authorization to invite the US army onto its territory, but it soon became clear that the only practical way to project force into the landlocked territory of Uganda would require access across Kenya. The Kenyan government was prepared to provide air and land access and the use of a military base in the northwest of the country in exchange for a large chunk of development and military assistance, but not without domestic political cover in the form of a UN resolution calling for armed intervention in the Republic of Uganda. Suddenly the US found itself needing not only a majority on the Security Council, but the avoidance of opposition from China and Russia, the two veto-wielding members of the Council who were likely to vote down the resolution. That in turn meant weeks of negotiation and horse-trading in the corridors of the UN headquarters in Manhattan and in foreign ministries across the world.
Through the summer the State Department machine worked at getting a majority of votes behind a resolution and putting the Chinese and Russians into a position where they couldn’t – or wouldn’t – vote against it. They had reasons to. The Russians were always looking for leverage against the US because of the continuing American presence in Georgia. The Chinese were deeply involved in Sudan, where they ran the oil industry, and had no reason to want to see US troops across the Ugandan border, for however short a time. But for their own domestic and regional strategic reasons, neither government wanted to be seen gratuitously blocking an operation with overwhelmingly humanitarian aims. That was where they were vulnerable and Marion Ellman, the US ambassador to the UN, led the diplomatic offensive. Forty-four, an ex-assistant secretary of state for Latin American affairs and professor of international relations at Berkeley, Ellman was a tall woman, usually dressed in a pant suit, with an attractive, slightly masculine face and dark shoulder-length hair.
Now she waited for the president of the Council to open the debate.
As proposer of the resolution, Ellman spoke first. Her speech was relatively brief. Minds around the table had been made up, she knew, and nothing she said now was going to change them. The crimes of the LRA were well known. She gave a succinct overview of the LRA’s murderous record and the failed attempts by the Ugandan government to eradicate it. Without naming them explicity, she concluded with a last reminder to China and Russia of how they would be seen if they blocked the resolution.
The Russian ambassador, Evgeny Stepsin, didn’t speak in the debate. The Chinese ambassador, Liu Ziyang, made remarks about the gravity of the decision and the risks attached to the internationalization of any conflict, no matter how localized it seemed. Ellman listened carefully to his words. It was always hard to read the nuances through translation, when not only the subtlety of meaning might be lost but the words were detached from the expression and body language that accompanied them. She knew Liu wasn’t going to vote in favor. She tried to decipher whether he was using his apparent objection to ‘internationalization’, as he called it, in order to rationalize an abstention. Or was he trying to justify a veto? The Chinese ambassador was a small, energetic man with rimless spectacles. By the time he concluded Ellman still didn’t know which way China was going to go.
Speaking in French, the Ivory Coast ambassador, the Council’s president for the month, called for the vote.
First he asked those in favor of the resolution to raise their hands. Ellman did so and looked at the other ambassadors. She counted them off. Argentina, France, India, Ireland, Ivory Coast, Spain, Thailand, Tunisia and, sitting right beside her, the United Kingdom.
Ten votes, including hers, out of seventeen. She let out her breath. She had a majority. That was the first hurdle.
The translation of the Ivory Coast ambassador’s voice came through her earpiece, calling on those voting against the resolution.
Chad, Bolivia and Serbia immediately voted no. Then Brazil. Then Malaysia.
She looked at Liu Ziyang across the stenographers’ table in the middle of the horseshoe. Further around the table sat the big bulk of Evgeny Stepsin.
Neither Liu nor Stepsin made a move.
‘Abstentions?’ said the voice of the translator in her earphone.
Silently, the two men raised their hands.
THE SESSION BROKE up. The Ugandan ambassador, who had been watching from the spectator seats in the chamber, headed straight for her.
He grabbed her hand in both of his and wouldn’t let it go. He was a large man in a grey double-breasted suit that made him look even larger, and he was genuinely choked up. He tried to tell her how much this meant to Uganda but all he managed to say was that he couldn’t express how much it meant. Ellman nodded. ‘We’re going to do what we can,’ she said. He thanked her again. There were tears in his eyes.
‘We depend on you, Madam Ambassador,’ he said, still holding her hand in his big, soft mitts.
‘You can depend on us,’ she said.
The Kenyan ambassador joined them. Marion managed to extricate her hand from the Ugandan ambassador’s grip. They talked for a few minutes about the implications of the vote. Ellman couldn’t give them a timetable for action. That would be worked out over the coming days.
Out of the corner of her eye she noticed the Sudanese ambassador deep in conversation with Liu.
China had spent a decade building up its position in Africa, and nowhere more dominantly than in Sudan. The strong opinion in the State Department was that if the US was going to do this thing, it would have to be done in coalition. France and Britain had already told her they were prepared to consider sending limited contingents. Participation from developing countries would be even more important. No matter how small the contributions, no matter how symbolic, they were needed. China would simply lose too much face if the US went in alone.
The Kenyan and Ugandan ambassadors were still speaking to her. Ellman nodded, only half listening. She looked at Liu again. The Chinese ambassador glanced at her from behind his rimless glasses and turned away.