Commentary: "Why American neocons are out for Kofi Annan's blood"

[Bluebear]

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....


This lack of authority on the part of the economic and social council produces a failure to coordinate the UN agencies competing against each other in the same field. It is striking testimony to the difficulty of the UN in exercising leadership on development that in the controversy over the appointment of Paul Wolfowitz it is rarely mentioned that the World Bank is technically a UN body. No one is asking for Kofi Annan to be given a veto over whether Wolfowitz gets the job, but it does not seem unreasonable to demand stronger coordination at the centre to stop the World Bank pursuing neo-liberal policies that are in flat conflict with the development agendas of other UN agencies.

This brings us to the solid concrete roadblock in the path of the Annan reforms. The world is confronted with a choice between two competing models of global governance. The direction signposted by Kofi Annan is to a regenerated UN with new authority for its collective decisions. However, collective decision-making is only possible if there is broad equivalence among those taking part. And there is the rub. The neocons who run the US administration want supremacy, not equality, for America and hanker after an alternative model of global governance in which the world is put to right not by the tedious process of building international consensus, but by the straightforward exercise of US puissance......

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1449863,00.html

[tubbacheez]

1. I'm sure it also irks the neo-cons that Annan is both uppity, in the sense

that he doesn't bow easily to pressure,



and black.

[Selteri]

2. Of course they don't like Kofi and want a different UN

one that agrees with them and acts the way they want, they want to kill the UN like their predacessors killed the League of Nations.

It's not about racism, it's about fascism. They can't stand the idea of being accountable to any body that they don't own.

[sushi]

3. You can say that again!

"They can't stand the idea of being accountable to any body that they don't own."

[Selteri]

4. Alright - They can't stand accountability to someone they don't own. NT

[zonmoy]

5. basically

they want a UN of puppets that dances whenever the neocons or their puppet-masters pull the strings.