Posted on 12/22/2005 9:38:58 PM PST by Coleus
MR. ERELI: Good morning, everybody. Welcome to our first briefing of the day. It is with our Assistant Secretary for International Organizations, Kristen Silverberg, who's here to talk about the year that's almost behind us and the year that's almost ahead of us in terms of what's been accomplished on UN reform and how we see the way ahead in meeting the challenges of UN reform in the year to come.
So I will, without further ado, bring on Kristen. Thank you.
ASSISTANT SECRETARY SILVERBERG: Thank you all for coming. I thought I'd spend just a minute updating and then I'm happy to take any questions.
To begin, I am very pleased to announce that as of this morning we have final agreement in New York on the Peace-Building Commission, which was one of the high U.S. priorities for reform. There are about 70,000 peacekeepers, UN peacekeepers deployed around the world in places like Sudan, Ethiopia, Haiti to help those missions help move countries from post-conflict situations into longer lasting stable democracies with growing economies. We think the UN should have this mechanism to better coordinate across the UN function, to coordinate both the peacekeeping operations and the development and reconstruction functions. So we're very enthusiastic about the Peace-Building Commission. We're grateful that we had such productive discussions over the last few months and are now at the point where we can adopt the resolution and begin implementing it.
I can also announce progress on the Democracy Fund, which was first announced by President Bush, or called for by President Bush, in September '04. The Democracy Fund now has received commitments of $44 million from 20 different countries, so this is a great success. We're very happy that so many countries have rallied around
(Excerpt) Read more at state.gov ...
The State Department: still stuck on stupid.
We don't want to strengthen the Un. We want to kick their @sses to Switzerland, and get the hell out of thier anti-America dictators and third world ne'er-do-wells club.
After the Oil for Food scandal, and the fact that Kofi is still employed, there is no doubt that we need to end the lifeline for this freedom hating back stabbing organization.
The state department was infiltrated years ago by those who would undermine our nation. This is the second or third generation of state department officials that have been corrupted. No president seems to care enough to want to reform it.
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