THE red carpet and flowers were out this week at the United Nations' headquarters for its star ambassador, the actor George Clooney, to give his report after a harrowing trip to Darfur.
The Oscar-winning star had even brought his parents along to see him give one of the most important performances of his career: a speech highlighting a new surge in violence in Sudan.
But at the last minute, someone pulled the plug. Clooney, desig
nated the UN Messenger for Peace, had a message someone did not want to hear.
Sources at the UN said France and Russia were the nations that objected to the idea of an actor reporting on the horrors he had witnessed in Sudan and neighbouring Chad.
The rebuff is the first suffered by one of a chain of celebrity envoys the UN employs to highlight its work around the world.
But it raised questions about whether their role is anything more than cosmetic and whether celebrity involvement is a good or bad thing.
Clooney himself refused to be silenced, gathering journalists in an adjacent room to broadcast a plea for action.
"I am the son of a newsman," he said. "The job of messenger comes with the responsibility to deal with facts, not to tell people what they want to hear, but to tell them the truth, unfiltered."
But this truth is not what some UN members want to hear, especially regarding Darfur.
Despite fine words and half a dozen resolutions, the UN – or more accurately its member states – has washed its hands of the problem.
Four years after Sudan began a campaign of ethnic cleansing that has killed 100,000 people and uprooted two million more and two years after war crimes investigations were authorised, the UN has failed to install a peacekeeping force or put serious pressure on Sudan to stop the violence. And, said the 46-year-old actor, the violence is now spreading to Chad.
"I was in Chad two years ago, and it's worse now than when I was there," he said. "And Sudan isn't particularly better now."
Officially, the UN says the meeting was a technical gathering where Clooney's participation was not needed. But privately many UN officials are furious. "Russia said no," one official told The Scotsman. "They waited till the very last minute, (then] they said: why do we need an actor to tell us how we should run peace operations?"
However Russia denied opposing the Clooney mission, saying the meeting in question was technical and not an appropriate forum for him to attend.
"The Russian ambassador is fully supportive of the actions of celebrities in stressing UN's role," said Russia's UN mission spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova. "Of course when we are talking about technical meetings we should keep to the procedure."
Clooney himself said that while member nations were happy to hear good news from celebrity ambassadors, they were less willing to hear the bad news. "There are groups that don't feel that I necessarily class-up the joint and don't feel that I should be speaking to them."
His mission was more harrowing than any yet held by the UN celebrity ambassadors, a two-week jaunt undertaken in secret for security reasons.
Clooney seemed to be the ideal candidate, as he is co-founder of Not On Our Watch, a humanitarian group dedicated to focusing attention on Darfur which has raised £4 million to help refugees.
Until his rebuff, the UN had enjoyed great success in its use of celebrities to spread the word on issues like poverty and Aids.
A-list celebrities such as Angelina Jolie, Geri Halliwell and Nicole Kidman sought to prove they had a serious side and confound critics by getting their hands dirty in a good cause.
They followed in the footsteps of the likes of singer Bob Geldof, who organised the Live Aid concerts, and the late Diana, Princess of Wales, who highlighted the plight of landmine victims.
But with Clooney, it seems, the UN has gone a step too far. The actor appears to have taken his role too seriously for some, highlighting the international community's continuing inaction.
A 70,000-strong peacekeeping force agreed last July in conjunction with the African Union has not materialised: African nations have provided troops but none has offered the helicopters and heavy equipment needed to allow a force to operate.
Clooney, who won an Oscar for Syriana, insists he will continue his role of highlighting the situation in Darfur.
"I am very proud to be here as a messenger of peace, and that message is that the world is watching, and that at this point we cannot afford to fail," he told journalists at what rapidly became a standing-room-only press conference.
Staff at the UN headquarters were certainly happy to see him, crowding the corridors as he walked by, waving and calling "hi guys".
"An Oscar's a nice thing to have in your life, but this isn't just sort of an honour, it's a responsibility," said the actor, who did not leave empty-handed. The diplomats might not have wanted to hear what he had to say, but they did arrange for a little ceremony to be held, at which he was given a lapel pin marking his designation as the UN's "Messenger for Peace".
"I don't know that I'll achieve anything," he said afterwards.
"What I expect to do is not sit on the sidelines and talk about it, but get involved."
ANGELINA JOLIESHE worked as a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations refugee agency.
Moved by the plight of war survivors she met in Cambodia while filming Tomb Raider, she took on the work to highlight the suffering of displaced people across the world.
Jolie, the daughter of actor John Voight, proved a huge success, funding her own visits to Sierra Leone and Tanzania, donating £500,000 to Afghan refugees, and famously declaring "We cannot close ourselves off."
One UN official said she was "fantastic" in the role.
BONOTHE lead singer of U2 – real name Paul Hewson – has a long-standing association with Amnesty International and is one of the best-known celebrity campaigners.
After the Bosnian war, he took his band to perform a cut-price concert in Sarajevo. In 2002 he appeared on the White House lawn to commend President George Bush for his £2.5 billion aid package.
More recently he has campaigned against global debt, encouraging governments, aid agencies and businesses to work together to fix the problem.
GERI HALLIWELL THE Spice Girls singer has long been involved in politics.
In 2001, she appeared in a TV commercial endorsing the Labour government, but also called Margaret Thatcher "the original Spice Girl".
She was seen as a success in her role as an ambassador for the United Nations Population Fund.
She visited the Philippines and later Zambia to highlight the need for more help for maternal health and Aids awareness.
Halliwell was involved in the UK leg of the Live Earth concert at Wembley stadium.
VANESSA REDGRAVEREDGRAVE was a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF).
Her activism stretches back to opposition to the Vietnam War and support for Jews fleeing the Soviet Union.
In recent years she has supported campaigns to help Bosnian Muslims, refugees in Kosovo and paying the bail for Chechen leader Akhmed Zakayev during his successful defence against extradition from the UK to Russia.
She offered bail for Jamil el-Banna, a Briton held at Guantanamo Bay, despite claims of al-Qaeda links.
RICHARD GERETHE Golden Globe-winning actor has been in hot water several times because of his political activism.
He was banned from presenting the Academy Awards again after using the occasion in 1993 to lambast China for human rights violations in Tibet, a stance that also saw him banned from China.
On an 2007 Aids mission to India, he caused a row by kissing actress Shilpa Shetty.
Last month Gere, who visited Kosovo in 1999 in support of ethnic Albanian refugees, spoke out against plans to make the province independent of Serbia.
The full article contains 1359 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
