Posted on 01/02/2007 2:51:50 PM PST by West Coast Conservative
New U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon ran into trouble on his first day of work Tuesday over Saddam Hussein's execution when he failed to state the United Nations' opposition to the death penalty and said capital punishment should be a decision of individual countries.
The U.N. has an official stance opposing capital punishment and Ban's predecessor Kofi Annan reiterated it frequently. The top U.N. envoy in Iraq, Ashraf Qazi, restated it again on Saturday after the former Iraqi dictator was hanged.
Ban, however, took a different approach, never mentioning the U.N. ban on the death penalty in all its international tribunals, and the right to life enshrined in the U.N. Charter.
"Saddam Hussein was responsible for committing heinous crimes and unspeakable atrocities against Iraqi people and we should never forget victims of his crime," Ban said in response to a reporter's question about Saddam's execution Saturday for crimes against humanity. "The issue of capital punishment is for each and every member state to decide."
His ambiguous answer put a question mark over the U.N.'s stance on the death penalty. It also gave the new chief an early taste of how tricky global issues are, and how every word can make a difference.
Michele Montas, Ban's new spokeswoman, insisted there was no change in U.N. policy in what Ban described as "his own nuance" on the death penalty.
"The U.N. policy still remains that the organization is not for capital punishment," she said. "However, the way the law is applied in different countries, he left it open to those different countries."
The death penalty is legal in Ban's homeland, South Korea as it is in many other countries including the United States, Russia, China and much of the Middle East.
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
Oh my.
Must have been an oversight..
He has the right enemies.
I half expected the U.N. to lower its flag to Half Staff to mark the passing of Saddam. Unlike the flag remaining up at the passing of Gerry Ford.
Of course there is no place to go but up when speaking about the UN.
But if the new U.N. grand poobah pisses off the AP before that happens? Well, thats just a bonus, baby!
There was a reason John Bolton gave him his support.
What I heard of this guy in the first reports makes him sound first-rate. This pretty much confirms it.
The one-world leftists have been working for YEARS to make so-called "International Law" supreme over the law of all the sovereign nations. The UN was never designed with such a purpose.
First, you cannot have law without sovereignty, which is a realistic way of saying that he who has the power makes the rules.
Second, the UN is extremely undemocratic and unresponsive.
Third, this entirely violates the basis on which our nation was founded, and most other nations as well. So, bravo to the new UN SecGen. He is 100% RIGHT!
What I heard of this guy in the first reports makes him sound first-rate. This pretty much confirms it.
The one-world leftists have been working for YEARS to make so-called "International Law" supreme over the law of all the sovereign nations. The UN was never designed with such a purpose.
First, you cannot have law without sovereignty, which is a realistic way of saying that he who has the power makes the rules.
Second, the UN is extremely undemocratic and unresponsive.
Third, this entirely violates the basis on which our nation was founded, and most other nations as well. So, bravo to the new UN SecGen. He is 100% RIGHT!
Shouldn't be too long before Mr. Ban is excoriated by the Left.
Yup, won't be long before Ban's been burned by bonehead liberals, eh? ;-)
So, the UN must be working to end abortion around the world... right... right...
A - It didn't happen on his watch. Kofi was still officially the Sec-Gen when Hussein hung.
B - Why should the new Sec-Gen apologize for Iraq carrying out justice on a murderous thug??
This is just more appeasement by the left-o-weenied who own the UN!!!
Good for Moon.
The spin of the first sentence tells it all. Ban tells the factual truth, that it is up to each nation. Nobody is cited specifically as having trouble with that statement. Yet the news media creates the fiction of trouble where none might not actually exist.
Could be a change for the better.
Looks as if the new U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon just might be one of the good guys.
I guess the leftist idiots at the UN think that they can tell countries what laws to enforce, fortunately we haven't reached that point yet, hopefully we never will.
and the right to life enshrined in the U.N. Charter. (and the right to rape and let genocide happen).
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