Accra, Dec. 15, GNA - Mr Victor Gbeho, MP for Anlo on Monday denied ever begging President John Agyekum Kufuor for UN appointment as a Special Representative of the UN Secretary General.
Mr Gbeho said he was constrained to put the diplomatic issue in public domain but he found it necessary to do so, since Nana Akomea, the Minister of Information had publicly made him to like "a scoundrel", which he was not.
Mr Gbeho told a press conference in Accra, "at no time did the United Nations advertise the job in question nor offered it to the Government of Ghana. The Ghana Government was not expected to nominate anyone. I never visited the Castle to seek support or recommendation as Hon. Akomea said. I merely followed the advice of New York". He said when the UN Secretary-General offered him the appointment in July this year, he turned it down because of his domestic political engagements.
The Secretary General, Mr Gbeho said understood his predicament but implored him that he would try to address his problems by speaking to Professor Evans John Atta Mills, the NDC flagbearer.
He said, while those diplomatic discussions were going on, he was "invited to the United Nations to discuss an unexpected difficulty that had arisen with the appointment.
"Let me clarify that this is not unusual in the UN scheme of doing things. It actually reinforced my reluctance to accept the appointment. I offered to decline the offer immediately but I was advised not to take any final decision in the matter since the UN office in Freetown had been made aware of the unexpected difficulty in Freetown and had at that time received information that the President of Ghana had been made aware of the unexpected difficulty and that he was about to exercise an initiative with his Sierra Leonean counterpart."
Mr Gbeho said he therefore, agreed to wait because "courtesy and civility are the hallmarks of diplomacy".
He said when he returned from the New York, he met the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo who confirmed to him that the President had allegedly exercised an initiative in the case but nothing had changed.
Mr Gbeho said he then asked the Minister to convey to the President his thanks for his unsolicited initiative on his behalf.
He said he was a member of the NDC delegation that visited Abuja and that he was not the leader as Nana Akomea had portrayed him to be, adding that all the same, he shared with the delegation what it did on the visit.
