There’s only one convincing way to respond to attacks on oneself and/or one’s leadership: to smile and give genuine assurances that you are going to give full consideration to the arguments of opponents, or the opposition, and in any case you will sure try to do better.
UNSG BAN Ki-Moon has just chosen a poor alternative. [...]
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Filed under: BAN Ki-Moon, UN Administration
UNSG BAN Ki-Moon entered the Gaza strip this morning (Sunday) — despite firing of at least four rockets from Gaza on Saturday to Israeli perimeter communities.
Such firing usually brings Israeli reprisals — but that will have to wait until BAN leaves the Gaza Strip. [UPDATE: SMS Israel is reporting that Palestinian sources say the [...]
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Filed under: BAN Ki-Moon, Gaza, Human Rights, Humanitarian Aid, International Humanitarian Law, International Law, Israel, Palestine & Palestinians, Sanctions
Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad gave UN Secretary-General BAN Ki-Moon a safe and secure look at the situation on the ground in the West Bank.
UNSG BAN was originally supposed to meet Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas — but Abbas reportedly is suffering back pain following an accidental fall last week, and was advised to [...]
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Filed under: BAN Ki-Moon, Boundaries & Borders, Israel, Middle East Peace Process, Palestine & Palestinians
Russia has wanted to host an international conference on Middle East Peace since the start of the Annapolis process of direct negotiations in late November 2007.
It wasn’t exactly a full international multilateral conference, but today the Quartet of Middle East negotiators (US, Russia, European Union + UN) met in Moscow — with their Special Representative [...]
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Filed under: BAN Ki-Moon, European Union, Israel, Middle East Peace Process, Negotiators and negotiations, Palestine & Palestinians, Quartet, Russia, USA
The UN General Assembly has asked UNSG BAN Ki-Moon to report back in five months about Israeli and Palestinian progress in investigating concerns about war crimes during the IDF’s three-week Operation Cast Lead in Gaza last year.
That does not mean, however, that there is a five-month deadline for the completion of the investigations. [...]
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Filed under: BAN Ki-Moon, Gaza, Human Rights, International Humanitarian Law, Israel, Palestine & Palestinians
UNSG BAN Ki-Moon transmitted the information he has received in the past week or so from (1) Israel, (2) the Palestinian Authority, and (3) Hamas, in response to a UN General Assembly resolution adopted last November calling on the three parties to establish credible independent and impartial investigations into the last winter’s Gaza war.
The UNSG [...]
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Filed under: BAN Ki-Moon, Gaza, Human Rights, Israel, Palestine & Palestinians, UN General Assembly
Somehow, the Jerusalem correspondent of the British newspaperThe Independent, Donald Macintyre, got ahold of an unpublished article written after what was clearly very extensive work by an Israeli journalist for Israel’s largest-circulation Hebrew-language newspaper (Yediot Ahronot).
Somehow — despite the immense pressure being exerted on Israeli soldiers not to talk about their experiences in Gaza a [...]
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Filed under: BAN Ki-Moon, Gaza, Human Rights, International Humanitarian Law, Israel, Journalism and Journalists, Palestine & Palestinians
UN SG BAN Ki-Moon has confirmed — days after the event — the death of the head of the UN misson in Haiti, Hedi Annabi, following a devastating earthquake.
Photo from Matthew Lee’s Inner City Press here showing the collapsed hotel that the UN rented as its HQ in Haiti
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Filed under: BAN Ki-Moon, Haiti
The AP’s indefatigable Edith Lederer has reported that “Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said yesterday he will send a report calling for Israel and the Palestinians to investigate alleged war crimes during last winter’s conflict in Gaza to the UN Security Council ‘as soon as possible’.”
She added that “The 15 council members have already received copies of [...]
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Filed under: BAN Ki-Moon, Gaza, Human Rights, Israel, Palestine & Palestinians, UN General Assembly, UN Secretary-General, UN Security Council
Israel’s Deputy Prime Minister Silvan Shalom called on UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon at UNHQ in New York on Friday afternoon, and afterward told the Israeli Ynet media group that the Goldstone report on the Gaza war should be “buried”, according to a report on the YNet website.
According to Ynet, Shalom said, “I am more optimistic [...]
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Filed under: BAN Ki-Moon, Gaza, Goodwill Ambassadors, Human Rights, Israel, Palestine & Palestinians, UN General Assembly, UN Secretary-General, UN Security Council, United Nations