Book Description
Praise for Kofi Annan: A Man of Peace in a World of War


"Stanley Meisler, an old and steady hand at the U.N., has written a readable, wise, balanced, and most thoughtful biography of Secretary-General Kofi Annan. The focus is on his victories and defeats as secretary-general and on his problems and challenges and how he faced them. Stanley looks at the charges against him as well as his undoubted contributions and calls it as he sees it. This book is essential for anyone who wants to understand Kofi Annan's contribution to the 'house' as well as the genesis and exodus of the attacks against him."
--Thomas R. Pickering, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and former undersecretary of state

"Stanley Meisler is a great reporter--this is a wonderfully observed and beautifully written book. It is the definitive portrait of Kofi Annan's calm and dedicated leadership of the United Nations at a time of huge international turmoil."
--William Shawcross, author of Deliver Us from Evil: Peacekeepers, Warlords, and a World of Endless Conflict

"Kofi Annan is one of the world's most compelling figures. This is both an absorbing biography of a remarkable man and a fast-paced history of the United Nations at the opening of a new century. Stanley Meisler has made the U.N. story come alive as a flesh-and-blood drama of outsized egos clashing over high-stakes issues."
--Doyle McManus, Washington Bureau Chief, Los Angeles Times

"[This is] a revealing and timely portrait of a remarkable man who has helped shape the first years of the twenty-first century. After finishing Stanley Meisler's book, my only regret is that Kofi Annan isn't running for president of the United States. He'd have my vote in a heartbeat."
--David Lamb, author of The Africans

"Stanley Meisler is one of America's most knowledgeable and entertaining writers about the United Nations and its history. Now, he gives us an authoritative, highly readable account of the career of Kofi Annan, from his days as a young Ghanian student at MIT to his tenure at the United Nations. The book covers Annan's successes and his notable failures, from Rwanda to, especially, Iraq. Through Annan's career, Meisler narrates the story of how both the Clinton administration and the George W. Bush administration have used the United Nations as a political scapegoat. This is, in a sense, a biography of a tragedy."
--James Mann, author of Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush's War Cabinet and the author-in-residence at the School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University, Washington, D.C. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Kofi Annan - in the eye of the storm
The United Nations is becalmed. Kofi Annan, the courtly, quietly-spoken Ghanaian, a fixture on our television screens for a decade, has gone; his successor as secretary general, Ban Ki-Moon, has yet to stamp his personality on the world body.



In the hiatus Stanley Meisler, journalist, author, UN insider, has led the inevitable rush to publish a summation of the Annan years. He is well qualified to do so.



The dustcover of this book is a pointer to the treatment Meisler gives his subject in a biography which Annan did not authorise, but did not try to block. The former secretary general is pictured half in shadow, looking worried, almost shifty in his dark, pin-striped business suit.



It is not the image we are used to, yet in many ways appropriate, because this was a secretary generalship of sunshine and shadow - the Nobel Peace Prize and the oil-for-food scandal; East Timorese independence and always and inevitably, the Iraq conflict.



It was a time of steadily worsening relations between the UN and the United States, although the antagonism began well before Annan took office and continued despite his best efforts to find a middle way. His relations with the Clinton White House, always testy after the bombing of Serbia during the Kosovo crisis, plunged to new depths when the neo-conservative-dominated Bush Administration took office in 2001.



He was powerless to influence a presidency determined to avenge the death and destruction of 9/11. The fact he even tried earned condemnation and while President George W. Bush may have talked about the "unique legitimacy" of the United Nations, in the minds of those at the White House the uniqueness and the legitimacy existed only when it was bestowed on the US to do what it wanted to do.



Key Bush adviser Richard Perle openly looked forward to the death of the UN in the wake of the initially successful invasion of Iraq and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, and the ultimate insult was delivered with the appointment of the far right ideologue, John Bolton, as American Ambassador to the international body.



The fiction that Bolton was there to promote UN reform was paper thin. As Meisler writes, there were plenty of institutions that needed the reforming touch including, after the 2000 election, the American system of casting and counting votes. "But the clamour for UN reform was different. It was incessant, very loud and very suspicious"....coming too often from "American ideologues who wanted to paint a false image of the UN as corrupt, slovenly, wasteful, inefficient and anti-American".



Throughout these turbulent times, Annan struggled to enhance what little clout the UN possessed in whatever way he could. While his predecessor, Egyptian Boutros Boutros-Ghali, had been a remote figure, Annan took to the celebrity circuit, becoming a fixture in New York society, attending an endless round of parties giving and receiving advice whenever and wherever he could. While naturally a charming man, one has the feeling that this was not his ideal modus operandi, but circumstances forced him to play the public relations card



Meisler reveals the endless sniping from Washington took its toll on the secretary general. He suffered two bouts of depression to the point where a sympathetic French President, Jacques Chirac, pleaded with him: "You must pull yourself together". On the second occasion at the height of the row over oil-for-food with the American right baying for his blood, a number of colleague persuaded Annan to attend two secret meetings "to shake him out of his low feelings". It is a measure of the man that he responded and returned to task with renewed vigour.



For me some of the most interesting parts of this book deal with Annan's early life. A long-serving UN bureaucrat, he worked mostly out of sight behind the scenes and it was only in the early 1990s that he emerged as a possible contender for the top job. The young Kofi was an athlete with an eye for the girls who briefly considered a career as a businessman running a flour mill in Ghana and served a short term as that country's tourism chief.



Even when he was settled at the UN, his ultimate ambition did not stretch beyond assistant secretary general rank, but fate decreed otherwise.



This is a thoroughly readable book which sheds light on a complicated, brilliant yet vulnerable individual who steered the UN safely though some of the worst years in its history. Whether this course can be maintained by his successor remains to be seen.

Impressive, intriguing and recommended
I liked this book very much because it covers the entire life of a remarkable man, who I admire so much. I am thankful to Meisler for this in-depth, objective and complete account of so many little-known facts and events from the life of Kofi Annan that I am sure will urge you to read it cover to cover. There is a lot you can and will learn from this book and that's why I highly recommend it. ... Read more

Book Description
The Secretary-General of the United Nations is a unique figure in world politics. At once civil servant, the world's diplomat, lackey of the UN Security Council, and commander-in-chief of up to a hundred thousand peacekeepers, he or she depends on states for both the legitimacy and resources that enable the United Nations to function. The tension between these roles - of being secretary or general - has challenged every incumbent. This book brings together the insights of senior UN staff, diplomats and scholars to examine the normative and political factors that shape this unique office with particular emphasis on how it has evolved in response to changing circumstances such as globalization and the onset of the 'war on terror'. The difficulties experienced by each Secretary-General reflect the profound ambivalence of states towards entrusting their security, interests or resources to an intergovernmental body. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

The most impossible job in the world
A very good summary of the experience of the past Secretary-General ... Read more

Book Description

Customer Reviews (7)

spot on
With insight, wit and stores of knowledge about the UN and world affairs, James Traub paints a sympathetic but brutally honest portrait of Kofi Annan as Secy=General. Five star.

Timely study of the UN and the challenges of global leadership
The strengths of this excellent book far outweigh its weaknesses.It is especially compelling as a case study of leadership in a deeply flawed but essential institution. Traub's had access to Kofi Annan, as well as Annan's chief lieutenants at the UN, over an extended period of time that included his early successes, the events prior to the Iraq war and the Iraq "Oil for Food" scandal.Through the text we gain an understanding of the inner workings of the infamously cumbersome UN bureaucracy as well as the impossible constraints placed upon it by the United States government and the 191 other member states. Annan's early successes as Secretary General were substantial; yet his passive style of leadership made him very vulnerable. He ultimately paid a severe price. Traub documents Annan's physical and mental breakdowns and the blow to his reputation caused by his failure to properly monitor the Oil for Food program.

The book would have benefited from a section with further details on the overwhelming complexity of the UN organization and the lack of power of the Secretary General to control it.Traub also occasionally feels compelled to engage in weak, superficial "fair and balanced" analysis that is not helpful to the overall narrative.Overall, however, this is a fine book that is a useful way to learn about the challenges of running the UN.

An Impossible Role
FDR was a leading proponent of the U.N. after WWII had proven the League of Nations (formed in response ti WWI) ineffectual.His vision was that the "four policemen" (U.S., Nationalist China, Russia, and Britain) would be able to prevent WWIII.

Unfortunately, it is hard to think good thoughts about the U.N. as it currently operates, given its consistent failures in Darfur, Iraq, Serbia, Congo, Zimbabwe, and the Mid-East, as well as in the areas of nuclear non-proliferation, global warming, and HIV/AIDS.However, it is much harder to think of a realistic and better alternative, given the high-level and intense jockeying for power by the U.S., Russia, and China, and Iran, Venezuela, Iraq, India, and others taking advantage of every opportunity to increase their own agendas.

In the midst of this never-ending squabbling, Kofi Annan, with little personal power within the U.N. and tarred by his son's role in the "Oil for Food" scandal, tries to convert his best intentions into constructive action.Predictably, he fails.

Hopefully "The Best Intentions" will lead the way to effective reform of the U.N., and we won't need a WWIII to come up with a better alternative.

Kofi Annan's record
This is an excellent book, which reviews Annan's work from the inside of the UN secretariat. Traub was given generous access to internal debates and Annan's close associates, and gives a detailed account of the UN responses to
difficult or impossible dilemmas and crises during his term, and to the attitudes of member states. Annan's own personality is itself described, with its strengths and foibles in a candid way.
Recommended to all those interested in the UN and in the role of the UN Secretaries General.

Yves Beigbeder (former UN and UNITAR official, Retired)
January 2007

A huge scam
This book would have us beleive that were it not for 'bad' America the UN would have magically solved all the world's problems.But let us take one test case for this.Where has Kofi Annan been on Darfur and the genocide in the Sudan?Has he done anything?Dag Hamarskojld, the first Secretary General bullied western nations to intervene in the Congolese crises in Katanga in 1960.It is strange that he was able to acheive results in a place that was not a genocide, but Kofi wasn't able to do anything and not only that he won't even call the complete ethnic cleansing and murde rof 200,000 Blacks by White Arab miltiias 'genocide'.Kofi Anna is not the 'best' Secretary General, he is in fact the weakest and worst, the only thing he had going for him was that he was not a former Nazi the way Kurt Waldheim was.When Kofi goes the UN and the world will be a better place.This book doesnt bother to ask any important questions such as:Why did Kofi Annan's family become millionares through UN handouts and jobs while he was in charge, why is Kofi Annans house getting a 4 million dollar renovation?Why did the UN Human rights commission critisize Israel 50 times more than any other country in the entire world, thus attributing the problems of 6 billion people to a nation of 5 million?Why did the UN do nothing on the Sudanese genocide, the war in Congo and wars in Sri Lanka or anywhere else? Why did the UN ethnically cleanse all of the Serbs from Kosovo and why did it also colonize Kosovo?

Seth J. Frantzman

... Read more

Book Description
The Nobel lecture given by the 2001 Nobel Peace Laureate Kofi Annan provides a plan and a hope for the future. ... Read more

Book Description
In this book, the reader can share their thoughts on intolerance, anti-Semitism and what can be done to end this longest surviving for of bigotry that has brought suffering and destruction to millions of ordinary people. Their thoughtful and passionate words explore the issue and their hopes for the future. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A strange little pamphlet
This book is really much shorter than one would expect from 88 pages plus covers.There isn't much on those 88 pages.But what is on them is interesting.

There is a brief introduction by Shashi Tharoor.After that is a short speech by Kofi Annan.In that speech Annan does say "let us acknowledge that the United Nations' record on anti-Semitism has at times fallen short of our ideals."And he calls the 1975 resolution equating Zionism with racism (since rescinded) "especially unfortunate."These are mild words from Annan, but they ought not be ignored.Slaughters of Jews were often triggered by a few words, and opposition to such slaughters may similarly be triggered by what look to us now as just a few words.Annan needs to be applauded for saying what he did, even though I think he ought to have said more.

We then see a short but excellent speech by Elie Wiesel.Wiesel does mention the extremely counterproductive Durban racism conference, and I think Annan ought to have done so as well.

The rest of the book includes some very interesting photos, many of them well-chosen examples of anti-Semitic propaganda.I do think there is an exception: the flyer about a conference at Rutgers in 2003 does not look like an example of anti-Semitism but appears to be protesting an anti-Israel hate fest.This flyer ought to have been described as such, and I'm deducting a star for including it without explaining it. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

OK book about a very bad man.
Kofi Annan is a sick man and a dangerous one at that.Kofi Annan: The Peacekeeper is ironic in that Annan has been indirectly and directly responsible for the deaths of many people due his being asleep at the wheel at the UN, support for Arafar, etc.

Jeff Jacoby recently wrote that he is basically a symptom of UN's sickness.Jacoby noted that just last week, Annanwoke up to a Wall Street Journal column by Glenn Harlan Reynolds, publisher of the influential InstaPundit website, urging that he be replaced by Vaclav Havel, the much-admired former president of the Czech Republic.

In The New York Times, op-ed eminence William Safire reviewed the revelations that link the massive oil-for-food scandal to Annan's own family: Until this year, his son Kojo was getting monthly payments from a firm that had a major oil-for-food contract with the UN -- even though he'd left the company in 1998. The corruption enveloping the UN will not begin to dissipate, Safire wrote, until Annan resigns, "having, through initial ineptitude and final obstructionism, brought dishonor on the Secretariat of the United Nations."

Meanwhile, the latest National Review was out, with its cover photo of Annan and the headline, in large red letters: "You're Fired!" An editorial inside insisted that "Annan should either resign, if he is honorable, or be removed, if he is not," while an essay by Nile Gardiner, a former aide to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, explained why "Kofi's hour is up." With his record, Gardiner observed, "if Annan were the CEO of a Fortune 500 company . . . he would have been forced to resign months ago."

On Wednesday came another call for Annan's ouster, this one from the chairman of the Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which has amassed evidence that Saddam Hussein used stolen oil-for-food dollars to underwrite terrorism and suborn at least one senior UN official. It is "abundantly clear" that Kofi Annan should resign, Senator Norm Coleman said. "As long as Mr. Annan remains in charge, the world will never be able to learn the full extent of the bribes, kickbacks, and under-the-table payments that took place under the UN's collective nose."

But odds are the world won't much care about getting to the bottom of the latest UN scandal. UN scandals rarely provoke lasting outrage. There was no global uproar when the brutal regime in Libya was chosen to chair the UN's Human Rights Commission. Nothing happened to the UN after its troops allowed Serbs to slaughter 8,000 Muslim men and boys in the "safe haven" of Srebrenica. Sex scandals seem to erupt wherever the UN goes -- the latest involves charges of rape, child abuse, and prostitution by UN personnel in the Congo -- but they never cause heads to roll in Turtle Bay. Annan himself became secretary general despite his failure, when he headed the UN's peacekeeping operations, to pay attention to warnings of genocide in Rwanda.

Why should anything be different this time? Oil-for-food may be the greatest international rip-off of modern times, it may have strengthened one of the world's bloodiest dictators, but if history is any guide, the scandal headlines will fade from view long before the secretary general does. By week's end, in fact, dozens of governments, including all the permanent members of the Security Council save the United States, had publicly rallied to Annan's support. Scandal or no scandal, he will almost certainly serve out the remaining two years of his term.

Which is just as well. Annan is merely a symptom of the UN's sickness, not the cause of it. His resignation would do nothing to reform the UN into the engine of peace and liberty its founders envisioned. Better that Annan remain in place as a symbol of UN fecklessness and failure, and a spur to those who can envision something better.

The UN is a corrupt institution, one that long ago squandered whatever moral legitimacy it had. The UN's founding documents venerate justice and human rights, but for the past 40 years, the organization has been dominated by a bloc of states -- essentially the Afro-Asian Third World -- most of whose governments routinely pervert justice and violate human rights.

Inside the United Nations, there is no difference between a dictatorship or a democracy: Each gets exactly one vote in the General Assembly. The reason the UN indulges vicious regimes like those in North Korea, Syria, and Cuba is that they are members in good standing, and most other governments lack the courage to cross them. The UN cannot be fixed unless that changes -- and that isn't going to change.

Kofi is a bad man.

Needs more depth
Tessitore's biography of Kofi Annan leaves the reader with only very vague insight into the life of the seventh Secretary-General to the United Nations.After only a few pages, it becomes evident that the author himself couldn't possibly have known too much about Mr. Annan.Thus, it was no surprise to learn later that Tessitore had never even had an opportunity to interview with the UN Secretary-General.

As a biography, Tessitore's account left me dissatisfied, since it gave me little detail about the life of Kofi Annan.It would be a perfect option for someone seeking only a very broad understanding of Mr. Annan's background.Considering he had access to scarce information himself, I guess Tessitore did a good job.But this begs the question: Why write a biography on a man you know very little about? ... Read more

Book Description
* The most authoritative and up-to-date review of the development of the world's cities and other human settlements
* The first global assessment of urban slums, the challenges they present and the ways to improve the lives of slum dwellers
* Statistical annexes provide essential information on demographic, spatial & economic, housing, and environment & infrastructural indicators

This is the only reliable and comprehensive assessment of the world's cities, and an essential tool and reference for academics, researchers, planners, public authorities and civil society organizations around the world. The 2003 report addresses the growing problems presented by slums in an increasingly globalized world. Using extensive case studies, it analyzes the factors behind the creation of slums and reviews the policies taken towards them. It demonstrates that to meet the UN's Millennium Goals of significantly improving the lives of over 100 million slum dwellers by 2020, policies must go beyond traditional infrastructural approaches to create livelihoods, and hope, for the urban poor. ... Read more

Book Description
This digital document is an article from APS Diplomat Recorder, published by Pam Stein/Input Solutions on June 30, 2001. The length of the article is 409 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: ARABS-UN - June 29 - Annan Begins 2nd Term.(Kofi Annan)(Brief Article)
Publication: APS Diplomat Recorder (Newsletter)
Date: June 30, 2001
Publisher: Pam Stein/Input Solutions
Volume: 54Issue: 26Page: NA

Article Type: Brief Article

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This digital document is an article from Siempre!, published by Edicional Siempre on July 16, 1998. The length of the article is 1103 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: El gobierno se metió en un avispero. (la visita de Kofi Annan a México)(TT: The government is in trouble) (TA: Kofi Annan's visit to Mexico)
Author: Agustín Gutiérrez Canet
Publication: Siempre! (Refereed)
Date: July 16, 1998
Publisher: Edicional Siempre
Volume: v45Issue: n2352Page: p11(1)

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In the 1970s the world became aware of a huge danger: the destruction of the stratospheric ozone layer by CFCs escaping into the atmosphere and the damage this could do to human health and the food chain. So great was the threat that by 1987 the UN had succeeded in coordinating an international treaty to phase out emissions, which over the following 15 years has been implemented. It has been hailed as an outstanding success. It needed the participation of all the parties: governments, industry, scientists, campaigners, NGOs, and the media, and it is a model for future treaties. This volume provides the authoritative and comprehensive history of the whole process from the earliest warning signs to the present. It is an invaluable record for all those involved and a necessary reference for future negotiations to a wide range of scholars, students, and professionals. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

EXCELLENT book for understanding Montreal Protocol
This book providers the reader with wonderful insights to the development and the Montreal Protocol and amendments. It is a carefully crafted and detailed book for those seeking to learn how this dynamic international environmntal regime was developed and operates today. For any reader interested in knowing how a successful international environmental treaty can be made to work, this is the book. I highly recommend it for any student of environmental or international law. The book is especially ensightful as to how science is a driver for international climate policy. The book may also serve as a primer to the onging nexus of ozone depletion and climate change politics and science.

Student of Climate Change
As a student that is focusing my career on the issue of climate change, I found this book on ozone layer protection to be an extremely valuable resource.This book holds the general formula for how to deal with all global environmental concerns.Andersen and Sarma chronicle the way the world realized, rallied, fought, and in the end cooperated to save the world from impending disaster.The layout of the book makes it extremely accessible for focused readers- it designates chapters to tell the contributions of scientists, diplomats, businesspeople and engineers, media, and NGOs.The authors were deeply involved with all of these groups, enabling them to tell the inside story in each of these chapters.Their lessons are punctuated by exciting stories written by integral players in each of their fields.The reader will undoubtedly learn much by reading the chapter that relates most closely to him, and when he reads the entire book he'll find a story that is astonishing and inspiring.In asking Andersen and Sarma to write this book, the United Nations Environment Programme entrusted the right authors to portray their most impressive success story to date, and the result is a huge success. ... Read more

Book Description
This digital document is an article from The Weekly Standard, published by News America Incorporated on May 16, 2005. The length of the article is 1257 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Kofi Annan's nemesis: by focusing on U.N. corruption, Norm Coleman has made a name for himself.(Senator is staunch in criticism of United Nations over 'oil for food' scandal)
Author: Duncan Currie
Publication: The Weekly Standard (Magazine/Journal)
Date: May 16, 2005
Publisher: News America Incorporated
Volume: 10Issue: 33Page: 17(2)

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Drawing on his days in the classrooms of M.I.T. and on the playing fields of Ghana, the U.N. the leader purses a moral vision for enforcing world peace. ... Read more

Book Description
This digital document is an article from Wind Speaker, published by Aboriginal Multi-Media Society of Alberta (AMMSA) on December 1, 2003. The length of the article is 665 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Indigenous peoples' contributions hailed.(Kofi Annan speaks out)
Publication: Wind Speaker (Newsletter)
Date: December 1, 2003
Publisher: Aboriginal Multi-Media Society of Alberta (AMMSA)
Volume: 21Issue: 9Page: 8(1)

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This digital document is an article from Siempre!, published by Edicional Siempre on January 2, 1997. The length of the article is 853 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: EU impone su candidato. (el nuevo secretario general de la Organización de Naciones Unidas Kofi Annan)(TT: The US imposes its candidate) (TA: the new General Secretary of the United Nations, Kofi Annan)
Author: Marcos Cueva Perus
Publication: Siempre! (Refereed)
Date: January 2, 1997
Publisher: Edicional Siempre
Issue: n2272Page: p12(1)

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This digital document is an article from Siempre!, published by Edicional Siempre on March 5, 1998. The length of the article is 714 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Kofi Annan: diplomacia en el desierto. (Estados Unidos, las Naciones Unidas e Iraq)(TT: Kofi Annan: desert diplomacy) (TA: the US, the United Nations, and Irak)
Author: Zidane Zeraoui
Publication: Siempre! (Refereed)
Date: March 5, 1998
Publisher: Edicional Siempre
Volume: v44Issue: n2333Page: p49(1)

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Customer Reviews (1)

there is nothing worth quoting about Kofi Annan
Kofi Annan is a sick man and a dangerous one at that.

Jeff Jacoby recently wrote that he is basically a symptom of UN's sickness.Jacoby noted that just last week, Annanwoke up to a Wall Street Journal column by Glenn Harlan Reynolds, publisher of the influential InstaPundit website, urging that he be replaced by Vaclav Havel, the much-admired former president of the Czech Republic.

In The New York Times, op-ed eminence William Safire reviewed the revelations that link the massive oil-for-food scandal to Annan's own family: Until this year, his son Kojo was getting monthly payments from a firm that had a major oil-for-food contract with the UN -- even though he'd left the company in 1998. The corruption enveloping the UN will not begin to dissipate, Safire wrote, until Annan resigns, "having, through initial ineptitude and final obstructionism, brought dishonor on the Secretariat of the United Nations."

Meanwhile, the latest National Review was out, with its cover photo of Annan and the headline, in large red letters: "You're Fired!" An editorial inside insisted that "Annan should either resign, if he is honorable, or be removed, if he is not," while an essay by Nile Gardiner, a former aide to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, explained why "Kofi's hour is up." With his record, Gardiner observed, "if Annan were the CEO of a Fortune 500 company . . . he would have been forced to resign months ago."

On Wednesday came another call for Annan's ouster, this one from the chairman of the Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which has amassed evidence that Saddam Hussein used stolen oil-for-food dollars to underwrite terrorism and suborn at least one senior UN official. It is "abundantly clear" that Kofi Annan should resign, Senator Norm Coleman said. "As long as Mr. Annan remains in charge, the world will never be able to learn the full extent of the bribes, kickbacks, and under-the-table payments that took place under the UN's collective nose."

But odds are the world won't much care about getting to the bottom of the latest UN scandal. UN scandals rarely provoke lasting outrage. There was no global uproar when the brutal regime in Libya was chosen to chair the UN's Human Rights Commission. Nothing happened to the UN after its troops allowed Serbs to slaughter 8,000 Muslim men and boys in the "safe haven" of Srebrenica. Sex scandals seem to erupt wherever the UN goes -- the latest involves charges of rape, child abuse, and prostitution by UN personnel in the Congo -- but they never cause heads to roll in Turtle Bay. Annan himself became secretary general despite his failure, when he headed the UN's peacekeeping operations, to pay attention to warnings of genocide in Rwanda.

Why should anything be different this time? Oil-for-food may be the greatest international rip-off of modern times, it may have strengthened one of the world's bloodiest dictators, but if history is any guide, the scandal headlines will fade from view long before the secretary general does. By week's end, in fact, dozens of governments, including all the permanent members of the Security Council save the United States, had publicly rallied to Annan's support. Scandal or no scandal, he will almost certainly serve out the remaining two years of his term.

Which is just as well. Annan is merely a symptom of the UN's sickness, not the cause of it. His resignation would do nothing to reform the UN into the engine of peace and liberty its founders envisioned. Better that Annan remain in place as a symbol of UN fecklessness and failure, and a spur to those who can envision something better.

The UN is a corrupt institution, one that long ago squandered whatever moral legitimacy it had. The UN's founding documents venerate justice and human rights, but for the past 40 years, the organization has been dominated by a bloc of states -- essentially the Afro-Asian Third World -- most of whose governments routinely pervert justice and violate human rights.

Inside the United Nations, there is no difference between a dictatorship or a democracy: Each gets exactly one vote in the General Assembly. The reason the UN indulges vicious regimes like those in North Korea, Syria, and Cuba is that they are members in good standing, and most other governments lack the courage to cross them. The UN cannot be fixed unless that changes -- and that isn't going to change.

Kofi is a bad man. ... Read more

Book Description
This digital document is an article from Mensaje, published by Residencia San Roberto Bellarmino on February 1, 2005. The length of the article is 1986 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Kofi Annan frente al cerco de EE.UU. para superar la crisis del Consejo de Seguridad el Secretario General de la ONU ha convocado una comisión que, bajo un nuevo concepto de paz y seguridad global, plantee la reestructuración del organismo mundial. Sin embargo, EE.UU. ha neutralizado las esperanzas abiertas por esta comisión y empieza a buscar el alejamiento de Kofi Annan de su cargo.
Author: Alex Fernández
Publication: Mensaje (Magazine/Journal)
Date: February 1, 2005
Publisher: Residencia San Roberto Bellarmino
Volume: 54Issue: 536Page: 39(3)

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Book Description
This digital document is an article from Siempre!, published by Thomson Gale on September 26, 2004. The length of the article is 492 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Democracia y realidades: visita de Kofi Annan.(visita del secretario general de Naciones Unidas a México)
Author: Gerardo Perdomo Cueto
Publication: Siempre! (Magazine/Journal)
Date: September 26, 2004
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 51Issue: 2676Page: 38(2)

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Book Description
This digital document is an article from Siempre!, published by Edicional Siempre on October 1, 1998. The length of the article is 419 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Annan, enamorado de la paz. (Kofi Annan, Secretario General de la ONU)(TT: Annan, in love with peace) (TA: Kofi Annan, UN Secretary General)
Author: Gerardo Yong
Publication: Siempre! (Refereed)
Date: October 1, 1998
Publisher: Edicional Siempre
Volume: v45Issue: n2363Page: p54(1)

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