not impressive, kofi annan is not impressive, neither is the position of the UN chief !!! his speech comes too late…

I personally don’t believe in the United Nations or its Security Council; the only good I see in the U.N. is its different aid organizations, and even those could do better.

The position of Secretary-General of the U.N. is a very bad one for any diplomat’s career, it ruins everything they ever built and eliminates any accomplishments they might have reached in their lives; simply because they’re helpless in that position and there’s nothing they can do but follow the leaders’ decisions, in other words, the orders of the United States.

Kofi Annan, just like Boutros Ghali was before him, and just like Ban Ki-moon will be after him, was helpless and there’s nothing he could do.
Only now that it’s all over can he actually speak his mind.

The United Nations is in strict need of reform so that it can do its job instead of just being a platform for the US to push its orders to the world.

In the end, even though I’m no fan of Kofi Annan myself, I think he makes a good point in a number of the things he said in his speech, and I guess it’s better late than never.

He should have resigned the moment bush fired the first bullet in Iraq and gave his speech way back then.
Let’s talk a step back for a moment here. How old is humanity and how old is the UN, if you compare both lifespans, you’ll notice that the only world order that exists is that of the strong, economy or the military…

As far as aids, here’s how it works !
Me,’roch’ decide to give you ‘poor’ money.
Me, send my contractors to build stuff for you
Me, imposes restrictions on who you deal with in the future
Me, implant gazillion ONGs on your soil, coz i dont trust your management skills
Me, build a circle of influence in your country just in case i need to overthrow you.
etc..etc

I’m not trying to defend Kofi Annan, as I myself don’t think he took the right positions on various issues, but still if every Secretary-General resigned whenever the US administration made another one of its stupid decisions or actions, the U.N. could end up having a new Secretary-General every week.

Regarding what you said about aid programmes, it is true, and that’s why I said even those need to change and could do better, but still they’re the only thing part of the U.N. that are actually helping a bit.
This brings me to something Muhammad Yunus, the Bangladeshi Nobel prize winner and founder of Grameen Bank, said about how aid organizations should help through empowering the people of the country they’re helping to carry out the actual aid projects and put the aid money to use and actually help fight poverty, instead of having external contractors do the work, get all the aid money and not helping out the poor in the end.

Of late, the U.S. doesn’t even bother to have the U.N. rubberstamp its adventures. And of course the U.N. occupies some prime real estate in New York that’s long been the apple of some covetous eyes; if they wanted to sell out and move to, say Paris, the brief outpouring of crocodile tears at the announcement would quickly dry.

As to admirable Mr. Yunus, he is, as you note, in uneven competition with the very much entrenched World Bank. (Even by Washington, D.C. standards, their suburban headquarters is a country club; their staff wants for little.) The World Bank is, of course, headed by Paul Wolfson, a Bush Neocon and a principal architect of current U.S. “preventive war” and “boots on the ground” policy that’s done so much for all.

Did you see where source of the Nile, Lake Victoria, is vanishing? Interesting to see which disappears first, it or the Dead Sea.