Posted on December 31st, 2006 by Marian Houk
In the last few hours of Kofi Annan’s administration as UN Secretary-General, it is worth noting that his main achievements, according to him and his team, were (1) the Millennium Development Goals (which I treat elsewhere on this site), (2) getting the UN Security Council to proclaim that UN Member States have a responsibility to [...]
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Filed under: Israel, Kofi Annan, Kofi Annan Watch, Middle East Peace Process, Palestine & Palestinians, Salim Lone watch, Shashi Tharoor watch, UN General Assembly, UN Security Council
Posted on December 31st, 2006 by Marian Houk
Hours ahead of the actual transition to his administration, ”Incoming UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Sunday appointed veteran Indian diplomat Vijay Nambiar as his chief of staff and award-winning Haitian journalist Michelle Montas as his spokesperson, ” the Associated Press is reporting. “The appointments were the first by Ban, who officially takes the reins of the [...]
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Filed under: BAN Ki-Moon, Haiti, Transition, UN Secretary-General
Posted on December 31st, 2006 by Marian Houk
The best case scenario would be a massacre. The worst is still to come.Â
The Somali Transitional Government, which is somehow, and for some reason, backed by the United Nations, says there are wanted international terror suspects with the Somali Islamic Court forces who have retreated to Kismayo…
The Associated Press reports today that “Somalia’s prime minister [...]
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Filed under: Somalia, UN Security Council
Posted on December 31st, 2006 by Marian Houk
The UN is against the death penalty but understands desire for justice in Hussein case – according to the Special Representative of the Secretary-General, Ashraf Qazi (of Pakistan) — who was presumably not present at the hanging. In a statement dated 30 December 2006, and published on its News Centre website, the UN writes: ”Reacting to the [...]
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Filed under: Iraq, UN Secretary-General
Posted on December 31st, 2006 by Marian Houk
In today’s edition of the British newspaper Independent, Robert Fisk writes “He takes his secrets to the grave. Our complicity dies with him: How the West armed Saddam, fed him intelligence on his ‘enemies’, equipped him for atrocities - and then made sure he wouldn’t squeal”
“We’ve shut him up. The moment Saddam’s hooded executioner pulled [...]
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Filed under: Chemical Weapons, Iran, Iraq
Posted on December 31st, 2006 by Marian Houk
The Associated Press (AP) is reporting today from Iraq that hundreds are flocking to see Saddam’s gravesite near his hometown of Tikrit. One AP story has this: “Mohammed Natiq, a 24-year-old college student, said ‘the path of Arab nationalism must inevitably be paved with blood…God has decided that Saddam Hussein should have such an end, [...]
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Filed under: Iraq, Israel, Middle East Peace Process, Palestine & Palestinians, UN General Assembly, UN History
Posted on December 30th, 2006 by Marian Houk
Farzad Barzoft was hanged on Saddam’s orders after a phony confession of spying extorted by torture, and the promise of a pardon. Let’s not forget, either, the assassination attempt on Shlomo Argov, the Israeli Ambassador in London in June 1982, that predictably led to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and the expulsion of the PLO — [...]
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Filed under: Iran, Iraq, Israel, Journalism and Journalists, UN Security Council
Posted on December 29th, 2006 by Marian Houk
In Friday’s Christian Science Monitor, a commentary on Why the Somalia war unsettles the world -Â The Monitor’s View:
“How a war ends often depends on how it began. Take the one that boiled over in Somalia last week. Islamist forces attacked a legal government guarded by an invading Ethiopian army. Which side had just cause? The [...]
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Filed under: Somalia
Posted on December 28th, 2006 by Marian Houk
The Associated Press is reporting from Baghdad that “Saddam Hussein’s chief lawyer implored world leaders on Thursday to prevent the United States from handing over the ousted leader to Iraqi authorities for execution, saying he should enjoy protection from his enemies as a ‘prisoner of war.’ Iraq’s highest court on Tuesday rejected Saddam’s appeal against [...]
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Filed under: Iraq, UN Secretary-General
Posted on December 28th, 2006 by Marian Houk
The Washington Post today carries an opinion piece on Kofi Annan’s term of office by William Shawcross, British former journalist and author of The Quality of Mercy, a great book about the limitations and contradictions of the international humanitarian effort to help Cambodians, who fled to Thailand during the 1979 Vietnamese invasion, after suffering in isolation during the traumatic Khmer [...]
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Filed under: Cambodia, Journalism and Journalists, Kofi Annan Watch, UN Secretary-General, Viet Nam
