United Nations Summations



Annan and Junichiro Koizumi, the Japanese Premier with the dreamiest hair. (image via washingtonpost)

Part the Fourth, in which Japan angles, carefully, for a Security Council seat, while the Russo-Chinese alliance thwarts them mightily. Also: Kofi Annan, as usual, delivers a terse, weak, bloodless and, ultimately impotent three word summation, saying inability of the international players assembled to reach real reform was "a real disgrace." (Exaggerated cough suggesting feigned detachment) Our favorite "Impotent Annanism (tm)" is when he called the genocide in Darfur "appalling." (Averted Gaze) Now, that was vintage Annan!

Times Online, snarkily: "When George W. Bush was taken short at the UN Security Council, he did what small boys in his situation have been doing since school began. He asked Miss. He scribbled a note to Condoleezza Rice: 'I think I may need a bathroom break. Is this possible?'" You just know Bill Maher is going to have a field day with this in his monologue. He'll really fucking tee-off on that.

And, a left-of-center perspective from Ian Williams: "When drafting the package, Annan�s team tried to make an implicit deal. If the developing world would accept the security, disarmament, anti-terrorism and human rights aspects that the industrialised world � including, everyone presumed, the US � wanted, then in return it would get clear and explicit commitment for the Millennium Development Goals (MDG).

"However, community pressure will not work with those who do not think they are part of the community, notably new US ambassador John Bolton, who has been trying to anathematise much of what had hitherto been generally accepted. He is not going to allow the US Gulliver to be tied down by all these Lilliputians."

And from the Right (FrontPage): "those people that the UN pretends to represent: the downtrodden, the oppressed, the imprisoned, and the helpless, are not only ignored, as in Sudan � where the UN leadership cannot bring itself to say the word �genocide� � but are actually exploited. As investigators report from several African and Balkan UN missions, the cases of child rape, sexual exploitation, and overall neglect are so compelling to bring tears. But they will not bring legal action against the perpetrators.

"If we are surprised by these revelations we have only our own naivet� to blame. Many in America especially have voluntarily donned blinders rather than admit that the UN is what it is: ineffective in its mission, corrupt from top to bottom, and, most damaging, responsible for the deaths and abuse of millions of human beings it is sworn to protect. Yet what can we expect from an organization that requires only status of nationhood for admittance?"

From Seven.com.au (via Iwantmedia): "Prime Minister John Howard has skipped an official reception for Bill Clinton's anti-poverty Global Initiative in New York in favour of a private dinner with media mogul Rupert Murdoch.

"With Manhattan traffic in gridlock because of this week's United Nations summit, Mr Howard does not have time to attend both functions and chose the News Corp owner over the former US president."

And from Reuters, "Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez provided a rare moment of drama at the tightly choreographed summit with a tirade against the United States from the podium. He refused to keep to his allotted five minutes, saying Bush had been allowed 15."

Tightly choreographed? Pshaw. Did you see Kofi Annan's sloppy soft-shoe tap dance number around the Human Rights Council? From Russia's Novosti News: "A fierce clash of interests watered down the radical initial draft of the UN reform, behind which Annan threw all of his substantial weight. The resulting final document presented for approval to the General Assembly was smoothed over to please all the member states.

"Kofi Annan recalled at his September 13 press conference that the Russian ambassador [Sergei Lavrov, currently the Foreign Minister of Russia] once told him: 'What are you complaining about? You've had more time than God when he was creating the world.' 'And I explained to him,' the UN Secretary General said, 'that God had one big advantage: He worked alone, without the General Assembly and the Security Council and the Committees.'"

(Averted Gaze) You'd better work on your material, Kofi; and, while you're holed up in comedy detention, drop the "God" comparisons.

From the Washington Post: "After 10 years of debate, Secretary-General Kofi Annan had urged members in March to decide on council enlargement before their leaders arrived for this week's three-day summit. But it proved impossible and left the United Nations so polarized that it affected negotiations on the final document. In the end, it was watered-down significantly before an agreement was reached on the eve of the summit.

"There is strong support for enlarging the Security Council to reflect the world today rather than the global power structure after World War II when the United Nations was created. But all previous attempts have failed because national and regional rivalries blocked agreement on the size and composition of an expanded council _ and the latest effort fell into the same trap.

"Nonetheless, the so-called Group of Four -- Brazil, Germany, India and Japan -- that aspire to permanent seats on an expanded council have not given up."

This from the Financial Times: "Washington is seeking to impose fresh sanctions against Damascus and is searching for potential alternatives to the country's current ruler. Some US officials are believed to be considering holding a meeting with Mr Assad's uncle Rifaat, a rival who lives in exile and is unpopular at home. This week Zalmay Khalilzad, the US envoy to Iraq, warned that US patience with Syria was 'running out.'

"'This administration is determined to push Bashar al-Assad out of office. It is working with Syrian opposition [members] in exile and, it would seem, Rifaat al-Assad, to bring this about,' said Flynt Leverett, a former administration official and expert on Syria."

Good riddance to old trash, say we. And, from Reuters: "Rwandan President Paul Kagame ... who was in Atlanta to receive the Andrew Young Medal for Capitalism and Social Progress, said removing the debt burden was not enough to spur economic growth in developing nations.
Expanding trade with the United States and other richer nations is critical to Africa's development, Kagame said as he sat next to Young, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and a key figure in the U.S civil rights movement.