Yearly Archives: 2005

A sampling of United Nations related blog commentary

Overthrow: “The main objective of the United Nations conference World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) to be held this month in Tunisia is to ensure affordable internet access to all the poor countries and to get the full benefits that new information and communication technologies can bring to economic and social development. In all probability this will take the back seat and the summit will turn in to an acrimonious showdown between the United States and the challengers of its monopoly over internet, including the European Union.”

Scaramouche: “It’s looking a bit precarious for Syrian despot Bashar Assad. Not only does he have the UN on his back — big tsuris for any leader — he has to find a way to strike a balance between co-operating with the international body while showing his own people he’s still the commanding, authoritative strongman they’ve come to know, love, and cower in front of. Or at least, to remind them he’s the son of a commanding, authoritative strongman. With that in mind, he’s making some loud, macho noises: From the Globe and Mail: “President Bashar Assad said Thursday his country will co-operate with a U.N. investigation implicating the military in the killing of a Lebanese politician … Mr. Assad, while maintaining Syria’s innocence during a speech at Damascus University, also disclosed that a U.N. investigator has rejected Syria’s conditions for co-operating with investigators.”

PSoTD: “From Canada.com: “A treaty aimed at reducing deaths from smoking has been ratified by 106 countries who can now vote at the first meeting of the anti-tobacco convention, the United Nations said. The treaty, known as the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, was finalized in May 2003 and came into force earlier this year.”

Diplomatic Times Review: “UN Secretary General Kofi Annan sought Tuesday in Cairo to assuage Arab fears over possible action against Syria but urged Damascus to cooperate fully with the international probe into the assassination of former Lebanese premier Rafik Hariri,” according to an Agence France Presse report in the Daily Times of Pakistan.”

Patridiot Watch: “Saddam Hussein should burn in hell, but he shouldn’t have to face trial with his lawyers getting death threats all the time, and murdered twice. “Lawyers for Saddam Hussein and his aides severed all contact with the court trying the former Iraqi president on Wednesday after the second murder of a member of the defense team since the trial began last month. Attorneys representing Saddam and seven co-accused on charges of crimes against humanity considered a second day of hearings set for November 28 to be “canceled and illegitimate,” lead counsel Khalil al-Dulaimi told Reuters. Interviewed in the Sunni Arab rebel stronghold of Ramadi, west of Baghdad, he said he felt personally threatened and renewed demands for the United Nations to intervene to stop the trial following Tuesday’s killing of lawyer Adil al-Zubeidi.”

War in Context: “The Security Council on Tuesday unanimously adopted a one-year renewal of the United Nations mandate for the United States-led multinational force in Iraq. The resolution, sponsored by Britain, Denmark, Japan, Romania and the United States, extends the mandate until Dec. 31, 2006, but calls for a review of the decision by June 15 and allows for the ending of the mandate at any point if Iraq requests it. The review clause was added as a compromise with the demands of France and Russia, which initially asked that the term be extended for only six months.” READ MORE

A sampling of United Nations related blog commentary

Abu Aardvark: “Yesterday I skimmed through the final report of the Independent Commission investigating the UN’s Oil for Food Program. For 1000+ pages, it didn’t contain a lot of surprises – the Duelfer report on WMD already revealed a lot of this information, and press leaks have revealed a lot of the rest – but it did contain a lot of useful documentation and fascinating detail about the operation of the program for all its corruption, ineffectiveness, and contributions to strengthening Saddam’s domestic and foreign policy position, the Oil for Food Programme “reversed a serious and deteriorating food crisis” in Iraq. It saved a lot of people, especially the young and vulnerable.”

Paper Chase: “The UN-Afghan Joint Electoral Management Body (JEMB) said Monday that final results of Afghanistan’s legislative polls will be announced on Wednesday [press release, PDF], and that fraud allegations will not call the results into question. The September 18 vote was the first opportunity for Afghans to elect members to its Wolesi Jirga, or lower house of parliament … A JEMB spokesman said Monday that “All complaints of the losing candidates have been dealt with carefully and very few have been accompanied with facts such as time and locations. We are confident that the legitimacy of the elections is intact.” A slow vote count and the fraud allegations have delayed the announcement of official results, originally scheduled for October 19. Reuters has more.”

Illmethinks: “This article by Stirling Newberry gives a great example of how the right wing (little “r”) closet dwellers love to stir up trouble and how they accomplish it: “The Republican Congress is on the oil for food which hunt.”

Daily Kos: “After their deep concern with the “oil for food” scandal, I am positive the Right Wing (Faux, et al.) will be all over this theft from the good people of Iraq: “An auditing board sponsored by the United Nations recommended yesterday that the United States repay as much as $208 million to the Iraqi government for contracting work in 2003 and 2004 assigned to Kellogg, Brown & Root, the Halliburton subsidiary. The work was paid for with Iraqi oil proceeds, but the board said it was either carried out at inflated prices or done poorly.” This is the type of story that is unlikely to create trust for the United States in Iraq.”

Democracy Arsenal: “There’s an important debate underway on America Abroad about where the liberal internationalist consensus for humanitarian intervention stands after Iraq (see Anne-Marie Slaughter’s latest post for a partial summary). The gist is an argument over whether, as David Rieff claims, after Iraq, humanitarian intervention can no longer be distinguished from self-interested, imperialistic interventions done under the guise of promoting human rights and ousting despots. … Iraq has taught us key lessons that can and must guide future thinking on humanitarian intervention, mostly raising the bar for when we should intervene and how we need to do it. I list 10 of them: 2. While it Need Not Necessarily Derive from Any Single Source, Legitimacy is Essential – Anne-Marie Slaughter and Ivo Daalder illuminate how the US operation in Kosovo, though without UN imprimatur, had the effect of “pushing” international law to provide broader license for similar interventions, culminating in this Fall’s adoption of a UN “responsibility to protect” (a duty that, unaccountably, has not been invoked in Darfur).” READ MORE