Incoming U.N. secretary-general Ban Ki-moon announced the launch of "Operation Restore Trust" at his swearing in yesterday. According to the New York Sun report he was sworn "amid widespread accolades for his predecessor's 10-year tenure."
Here are some accolades for the new secretary general courtesy of the Wall Street Journal:
...thanks to U.S. military action that Mr. Annan did everything in his power to prevent--we learned that he had presided over the greatest bribery scheme in history, known as Oil for Food. We learned that Benon Sevan, Mr. Annan's trusted confidant in charge of administering the program, had himself been a beneficiary of Iraqi kickbacks to the tune of $160,000. We learned that Mr. Annan's chief of staff, Iqbal Riza, had ordered potentially incriminating documents to be destroyed. We learned that Mr. Annan and his deputy, Louise Frechette, were both aware of the kickback scheme but failed to report it to the Security Council, as their fiduciary duties required. However, we haven't yet learned whether the senior Annan illegally helped his son Kojo obtain a discounted Mercedes, an issue on which the Secretary General has stonewalled reporters.
Earlier this year, Mr. Annan was also forced to place eight senior U.N. procurement officials on leave pending investigations on bribery and other charges. Vladimir Kuznetsov, the head of the U.N. budget-oversight committee, was indicted this year on money-laundering charges. Alexander Yakovlev, another procurement official, pled guilty to skimming nearly $1 million off U.N. contracts. The U.N.'s own office of Internal Oversight found that U.N. peacekeeping operations had mismanaged some $300 million in expenditures...
Mr. Annan came to office after a stint as head of U.N. peacekeeping operations. The period corresponded with the massacre in Srebenica of 7,000 Bosnians and the genocide of 800,000 Tutsis in Rwanda, both of which were facilitated by the nonfeasance of peacekeepers on the ground. It was later revealed that Mr. Annan's office explicitly forbade peacekeepers from raiding Hutu arms caches in Rwanda just four months before the genocide.
Operation Restore Trust can't come soon enough, and we can only hope Mr. Ban will enjoy some success with it. At the announcement of his plans he added, "I hope this mission is not mission impossible."
He noted that the United Nations has been criticized for its "inability and inefficiencies during the last many years" and that a second trust was lost "among member states and between member states and the Secretariat." He promised to "try to play a bridge role" to overcome that mistrust.
On global politics, Mr. Ban said the Middle East is "the most serious issue with which we must deal." At the heart of it, he said, is "the relationship between Israel and the Palestine authorities," followed by Lebanon and Iraq. He said he would try to "energize" the so-called Quartet of America, the European Union, Russia, and the United Nations.
Asked about Iran yesterday, Mr. Ban said, "Denying historical facts, especially on such an important subject as the Holocaust, is just not acceptable. Nor is it acceptable to call for the elimination of any state or people. I would like to see that fundamental principle respected both in rhetoric and practice by all the members of the international community."
Mr. Ban has taken a good first step.
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