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Posted on 12/04/2004 8:04:37 AM PST by BenLurkin
UNITED NATIONS (AP) - The United Nations Correspondents Association gave its second annual "Citizen of the World" awards to former U.N. weapons chief Hans Blix, top U.N. troubleshooter Lakhdar Brahimi and actress Nicole Kidman, who is a goodwill ambassador for the U.N. Children's Fund in Australia. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who presented the awards at a black-tie dinner at U.N. headquarters Friday night, joked about calls for his resignation over allegations of corruption in the U.N. oil-for-food program in Iraq.
"Tonight, I have resigned myself," he said, pausing for several moments before adding, "to having a good time."
Annan made clear in several jokes that he was planning to leave when his second five-year term ends on Dec. 31, 2006.
"See you in a year - or three - if you're so gracious as to invite me back after I've retired," he said.
More than 500 journalists, diplomats, U.N. staff and Annan supporters attended the awards dinner.
Kidman, who stars in an upcoming movie called "The Interpreter" about a U.N. interpreter, accepted the award via a video-link from Los Angeles, where she is filming a new movie. "We are all citizens of a world that grows stronger every day," she said.
Brahimi was the U.N. envoy to Afghanistan after the ouster of the Taliban. He then helped put together the current interim government in Iraq.
Blix, who came under intense pressure before the Iraq war over his reports about the country's biological and chemical weapons programs, paid tribute to Annan. He said he expects the secretary-general's rein "will flourish" and told reporters, "I like the idea of being a Citizen of the World."
The Citizen of the World award is named in honor of Sergio Vieira de Mello, the top U.N. envoy to Iraq and high commissioner for human rights, who was among 22 people killed in the bombing of U.N. headquarters in Baghdad on Aug. 19, 2003.
The association also presented journalism awards, each with a first prize of US$10,000.
The Elizabeth Neuffer Award for Print Journalism went to the Wall Street Journal for a series on the United Nations. It is named after the Boston Globe correspondent who was killed on assignment in Iraq.
The Ricardo Ortega Award for Broadcast Media, honoring the Spanish television journalist killed in Haiti in March, was awarded to American Ted Folke of the Samba Project for a piece on East Timor.
The U.N. Foundation prize for humanitarian and development affairs was awarded to Mark Doyle of the BBC in Britain for his series on U.N. operations in Liberia.
Cartoonist Ranan Lurie announced that the first winner of The Ranan Lurie Political Cartoon Award was Gary Markstein of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
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your tax dollars at work.
giving the UN the ability to pat itself on the back $10 grand at a time.
Put this one in the "You Gotta Be Kiddin' Me" file. Sheesh.
It sounds like the footlicker awards to me.
...shouldn't that be
"Wannabe Citizen of the New Marxist-Islamist World Order" award?
Nice to know Kofi is joking about the oil-for-food scandal. Disgusting.
The unraveling occuring now will continue as congress is lining up some big hitters and it seems more are becoming part of the possee.
h = 1/v,
where h = hype and v = value.
"Hans Brix? Hans Brix?
Please, take one step to the reft.
Another.
Perfect!"
Too bad they couldn't re-enact the bathtub scene from Nicole's latest film with Blix as the young boy discovering womanhood, done artistically and tastefully , of course. ;-).
Hmmm, correspondents and editors...maybe?
At the arraignment, it was said that the leather rein had shrunk by being left out in the rain that occurred during the reign of the recently deceased monarch...
But reining in Kofi and the UN would be a good thing.
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