Why American neocons are out for Kofi Annan's blood

[Judi Lynn]

Why American neocons are out for Kofi Annan's blood

The US is determined to derail the secretary general's progressive reforms

Robin Cook
Friday April 1, 2005
The Guardian

The debate on Darfur in the UN security council last night is a salutary reminder that the only hope for peoples abandoned by their own governments is an effective international community.
It was a Labour government that hosted the conference in postwar London that gave birth to the UN. Now this Labour government has the opportunity to modernise it by taking up the challenge of Kofi Annan's blueprint for a UN for this century.

The UN was founded in an era when most of its present members were not independent states, and even fewer were industrialised nations. Nearly all permanent members got there because they were the victors of the second world war. To this day Germany and Japan have never overcome their initial exclusion as the losers, and the new industrialised giants such as Brazil or India remain in the waiting room.
(snip)

But there is a deeper level of perversity to the denigration of Annan by the American right wing. They have long clamoured for reform of the UN. Kofi Annan has just proposed the most comprehensive overhaul of the UN in its history and is the general secretary most likely to deliver support for it. If they persist in undermining him they are likely to derail his reform package. The suspicion must be that they would rather have a creaking, ineffective UN to treat as a coconut shy than a modern, representative forum that would oblige them to respect collective decisions.

The eccentric selection of John Bolton as Bush's ambassador to the UN is consistent with such a strategy of sabotage rather than reform. His hostility to any constraint on US unilateralism is so deep, (and his life so sad), that he described his "happiest moment" signing the letter to Kofi Annan telling him that the US would have nothing to do with the international criminal court. His relish in the gesture is all the more revealing as the issue was not within the remit of his job, and he pleaded to be allowed to sign as a special favour.
(snip/...)

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/columnist/story/0,9321,1449970,00.html

[Deb]

1. Thanks for sharing

"The economic and social council of the UN has never achieved the same status as its security council. The Annan report cogently points out the perversity of this imbalance, as so much of the agenda of the security council is taken up with violent conflicts that have their roots in the failure to promote peaceful development."

Now I finally understand why Annan threatens the neocons.

[Hamsta1]

2. Just google "John bolton PNAC"