The Perils of Ban Ki-Moon's Globe-Trotting

By Benny Avni
June 9, 2008
The New York Sun
Original Source: http://www.nysun.com/foreign/the-perils-of-globe-trotting/79522/
These are difficult times for anyone hoping that Secretary-General Ban would forgo the title of world diplomat in chief and instead become a Turtle Bay reformer. Traveling the world, Mr. Ban is too busy even to visit his organization's New York headquarters.
Just before setting off for Paris, London, and Riyadh this week, Mr. Ban made a brief stop in America on Friday. But he didn't tackle such important issues as changing the way corrupt http://www.nysun.com/related_results.php?term=United+Nations \o United Nations U.N. departments operate or making long-delayed key U.N. appointments. Instead he flew to Wyoming to attend something called the Global Insight Summit, organized by the United Nations and the Jackson Hole Film Institute.
Here's an unsolicited piece of global insight: The credibility of the United Nations is on the wane, and not only in parts of Wyoming not populated by indie filmmakers. Those seeking to free themselves from the yoke of tyrants in Iran, Zimbabwe, and Burma must wonder what good can come from Mr. Ban's recent meetings with presidents Ahmadinejad and Mugabe, and Senior General Than Shwe.
U.N. secretaries-general meet. That is what they do for a living. And any American unconcerned about the prospects of face-to-face, unconditional tough diplomacy with thugs should study their pitiful record.
The best possible outcome from Mr. Ban's meeting with Mr. Mugabe last week would be the dictator's agreeing to allow a U.N. envoy, Haile Menkerios, into Zimbabwe on the eve of its June 27 runoff presidential election. A former Eritrean ambassador to the United Nations, Mr. Menkerios is a friend of the South African government, which maintains close relations with Mr. Mugabe. But after meeting with Mr. Ban in Rome, Mr. Mugabe went after his chief rival, Morgan Tsvangirai, and his supporters, using the police and the courts to harass them, and setting up his next stolen election. Armed with renewed international credibility, courtesy of the United Nations, Mr. Mugabe also quickly moved to arrest American and British diplomats.
Mr. Ahmadinejad basked in the glory of a meeting with Mr. Ban last week, as well. His wisecracks abut the Jewish state's imminent demise went unchallenged, by Mr. Ban or by anyone else in Europe. And what does Mr. Ban have to show for his Rome talks with a man whom even Pope Benedict XVI has studiously avoided seeing? The best that can be said is that after meeting with Mr. Ahmadinejad, Mr. Ban can legitimately reject an invitation to visit Tehran, where a meeting with the regime's mullahs would damage the United Nations's image even further.
Sure, other world leaders meet with thugs: Almost unnoticed, President Sarkozy of France met with politicians from Hezbollah during the weekend in Beirut, throwing his country's estimable weight behind the Iran-backed organization's takeover of Lebanon. Mr. Ban, however, lately seems to be in a rush to powwow with the world's worst, perhaps in a bid to establish his credentials as a mediator.
Meanwhile, the secretary-general has rejected the candidacy of France's U.N. ambassador, Jean-Maurice Ripert, for head of the U.N. peacekeeping department, possibly because Mr. Ripert dared to publicly challenge the U.N. policy of appeasing the Burmese junta. Mr. Ban does not question the notion that a French person must lead peacekeeping, the world body's most important department. He is simply waiting for Quai d'Orsay to come up with a new name. The impasse could be resolved this week, when Mr. Ban travels to Paris to meet with Mr. Sarkozy.
With Mr. Ban's heavy diplomatic schedule, he probably barely noticed that the U.N. General Assembly last week picked a former foreign minister in Nicaragua's Sandinista government as its leader and moved to oust a Jewish organization for daring to inject a semblance of balance to the U.N. obsession with alleged Israeli human rights violations.
He also was left with little time to read the 353-page report he commissioned last year on the U.N. Development Program's North Korea operations, whose estimated worth in eight years was up to $72.3 million. Too bad: The report shows how merely by operating in countries such as North Korea, U.N. representatives give aid and comfort to the likes of Pyongyang's Kim Jong Il. While the UNDP is not likely to return to North Korea anytime soon, it continues to operate under similar circumstances in other countries where tyrants use U.N. development funds to help consolidate their power and oppress their people.
Come to think of it, isn't that also how they use Mr. Ban's diplomacy?