Posts Tagged ‘united nations’
Is Ban serious about dismantling Hizbullah?
For a few seconds while reading that Ban Ki-Moon in a report to the Security Council formally called for dismantling nongovernmental Lebanese militias, we were delighted. Following on the heels of a similar statement by the German Free Democratic Party’s Dirk Niebel, it boded well for a general trend – perhaps a new international willingness to challenge the organization that is quickly destroying Lebanese freedom and prosperity from the inside.
Ban even called Hizbullah “a fundamental challenge to the government’s attempts to consolidate the sovereignty and authority of the Lebanese state.” That is, at least, until it disarmed.
But then we read farther down:
Ban, in his report, said in addition to establishing diplomatic relations, Lebanon and Syria must also take concrete steps to implement other agreements reached during these meetings, including “joint activity to improve security arrangements along that border.”
And:
In the report, Ban called on Lebanese parties to immediately halt all efforts to acquire and build paramilitary capabilities.
That’s when we realized: this report isn’t a new realization, but a fig-leaf for the UN’s total helplessness. All parties should immediately stop building up their strength? That’s not just stupid, it’s unnatural. And a pointless statement when there isn’t a damn thing anyone is planning on doing to enforce it.
It looks like Durban II won’t be better than Durban I
Things look bad in the run-up to Durban II in April. A new text by the Asian bloc accuses Israel of “a new kind of apartheid, a crime against humanity, a form of genocide.”
“French President Nicolas Sarkozy, the U.K., the Netherlands and other states have expressly warned that a repeat of the 2001 hateful rhetoric would force them to walk out of the April 2009 conference, and so the 53 Asian states who did this now bear full responsibility for the consequences of their provocation. Those who will suffer, however, will be the world’s millions of victims of racism and ethnic intolerance, from Darfur to Chechnya to Tibet.”
