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UN chief Kofi Annan today called for an international peace conference on Iraq that would bring all the Iraqi factions together with UN help, but stressed that it would require adequate preparations. "I think it would be helpful to have a conference that brings everybody together, along the lines of what we did in the former Yugoslavia and others," he told reporters. "But I don't think one can organise that conference without other specific actions being taken," he said. "I do not believe, given the bitterness and the level of violence, that they can do it alone. The international community...

SOUTH Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-Moon won a third informal straw poll in the United Nations security council today to decide who will succeed Kofi Annan as UN chief, diplomats said. China's UN Ambassador Wang Guangya told reporters that Mr Ban had finished ahead of India's Shashi Tharoor, a UN undersecretary in charge of communications, and Latvian President Vaira Vike-Freiberga, the only woman in the seven-member field. Mr Ban, 62, thus consolidated his status as the odds-on favourite to succeed Mr Annan when the Ghanaian secretary-general steps down at the end of December after 10 years in office. As in...

The focus temporarily is on Sen. Lincoln Chafee, a frequently unfathomable maverick Republican, as the days dwindle down for this Congress to permit John Bolton to continue as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. But Bolton's two-year struggle to get confirmed can be directly traced to a determined Democratic senator and the vengeful UN secretariat. Senate Republican Whip Mitch McConnell sat down Tuesday for a heart-to-heart talk with Chafee, pleading with him to permit Bolton's nomination to reach the Senate floor. The reason Chafee is in this pivotal position can be attributed to Sen. Christopher Dodd's fierce open opposition to...

United Nations chief Kofi Annan says that the deadline for Iran to freeze sensitive nuclear work had passed but that he did not think the Security Council would act immediately. "Even though the deadline has expired, I don't think the Council is going to act tomorrow. I will need to be in touch with the players to find out how they intend to proceed," Mr Annan said. "And I am not sure that they are ready to take the kind of action you want," he said. "I will need further consolations with them." The Security Council adopted a resolution last...

CNSNews.com) - A Hizballah-based mortar attack, which fell short of its target in Israel on Sunday and injured three Chinese members of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), has received scant media attention and no reaction from U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan. Late last month, after four U.N. peacekeepers were killed in an Israeli air strike in southern Lebanon, Annan said he was "shocked and deeply distressed" at the "apparently deliberate targeting" of the outpost. While information about Sunday's incident was not immediately available from the United Nations in New York, news accounts in China reported that "A...

Israel's United Nations (UN) ambassador says he is "shocked" by accusations from UN chief Kofi Annan that the Jewish state may have deliberately targeted a UN post in Lebanon in an air raid. Four UN military observers have died in the strike on the post in the border town of Khiam. Mr Annan describes the strike as a "coordinated artillery and aerial attack on a long-established and clearly marked UN post". But Israeli ambassador Dan Gillerman says the secretary-general has judged the incident too soon. "I was shocked and deeply distressed by the hasty statement by the secretary-general insinuating that...

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan today said he was "shocked" at Israel's "apparently deliberate targeting" of a UN post in Lebanon, in which up to four UN observers were killed. Mr Annan described the strike as a "co-ordinated artillery and aerial attack on a long established and clearly marked UN post." He said it took place "despite personal assurances given to me by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert that UN positions would be spared Israeli fire." "Furthermore, General Alain Pelligrini, the UN Force Commander in south Lebanon, had been in repeated contact with Israeli officers throughout the day on Tuesday, stressing...

THE United Nations Security Council has held its first secret straw poll on four Asian candidates vying to succeed Kofi Annan, a Ghanaian, as UN secretary general. All four candidates to succeed Mr Annan, whose second five-year term expires at the end of the year, are Asian as the consensus at the UN is that it is now Asia's turn to assume the world body's top job in line with an unwritten rule of regional rotation. The candidates are South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-Moon, Sri Lankan diplomat Jayantha Dhanapala, Thailand's Deputy Prime Minister Surakiart Sathirathai, and India's Shashi Tharoor,...

UN SECRETARY-General Kofi Annan has called for restraint as Israeli troops massed on the Gaza border for a possible offensive after the kidnapping of a soldier. Annan urged all parties to "exercise restraint at this grave moment, and to take all possible steps to avoid further escalation and bloodshed," his spokesman said. According to the spokesman, the secretary general was "alarmed" at the recent events triggered by a Palestinian militant raid early Sunday on an Israeli army post on the Gaza Strip border. Two Israeli servicemen and two Palestinian fighters were killed and a 20-year-old Israeli corporal, who also holds...

Americans are coming to realize the United Nations is not the organization we once trusted, even revered. The United Nations betrays the idealism expressed in the preamble to its charter, forged over 60 years ago in San Francisco, which states, "We the peoples of the United Nations determined ... to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small ..." Two recent events demonstrate why the American people and their elected officials should be scrutinizing our country's subsidization of the...

US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld blasted UN Secretary General Kofi Annan Friday as "just flat wrong" in calling for the closure of the military-run detention centre at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. "I know Kofi Annan and there are a lot of things you can agree with him on, but he's just flat wrong," Mr Rumsfeld told an audience at the Council on Foreign Relations. "We shouldn't close Guantanamo," he said. "We have several hundred terrorists, bad people, people if they went back out on the field would try to kill Americans." "To close that place, and pretend there's no problem, just...

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan scolded the media for continuing to publish cartoons lampooning the Prophet Mohammed and defended an attempt by Islamic nations to have a new UN human-rights council address religious defamation. Annan also said he had no knowledge about US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's assertion on Wednesday that Iran and Syria had gone out of their way "to inflame sentiments and to use this to their own purposes." "I have no evidence to that effect," Annan told reporters after arriving at UN headquarters. "This is so widespread, and it is unfortunate (and) we all need to take...

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, U.S. President George W. Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will meet in Washington this month to try to pump new life into a flagging U.N. reform campaign that has run into strong opposition from developing nations. Mr Annan will hold talks with Bush Feb. 13 at the White House and afterward have a working lunch with Rice, U.N. chief spokesman Stephane Dujarric said on Friday. Management reform at the United Nations has become a top priority of the Bush administration following findings of mismanagement and corruption in the U.N. oil-for-food program for Iraq and...

EIGHT UN officials have been suspended with pay as part of an investigation into the world body's procurement services following scandals in the oil-for-food program in Iraq, UN officials said this morning. The investigation by the UN Office of Internal Oversight Services is the result of a probe into contracts in the UN peacekeeping department, which is fielding some 85,000 troops, police and civilians around the world. "There is an audit being done of peacekeeping department management," UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said. "As a result of that audit, which also took a look at the procurement department ... we have...

WASHINGTON — Sixty years after it was founded to bring nations together and prevent another world war, the United Nations finds itself in a time of crisis, with some critics saying they want drastic reforms immediately or dissolution of the world body altogether. "We decided to take on the United Nations. It’s been a problem for a long time," said David Bossie, president of Citizens United, a Washington, D.C.-based conservative grassroots group that has produced a documentary film criticizing the world body. "Their record is one of failure," he said. Some of the problems often cited about the United Nations...

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan is sending two senior peacekeeping officials to Eritrea and Ethiopia to assess the situation in the wake of Eritrea's decision to expel Western peacekeepers from the area, his spokesman said today. Spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters that Mr Annan decided to send the head of UN peacekeeping operations, Jean-Marie Guehenno, and military adviser General Randir Kumar Mehta to the two countries "as soon as practicable". Their mission will be to "assess the situation on the ground and to see what steps can be taken to improve the situation" after Asmara gave North American and European...

Documents released Wednesday by the House International Relations Committee offer the first real glimpse at just how close Oil-for-Food investigators came to concluding Kofi Annan lied to them, a finding that would almost certainly have brought about the U.N. secretary-general's downfall. The documents show a clear difference of opinion on Annan's testimony within the Oil-for-Food Inquiry Committee. Chairman Paul Volcker overruled the investigator who actually interviewed Annan. That investigator, Robert Parton, then resigned in protest. The documents include a transcript of a March 8 meeting between Volcker and other members of his team at which time they discussed Annan's role...

NEW YORK, November 18, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The militantly pro-abortion Center For Reproductive Rights (CFRR) is touting a ruling yesterday by the UN Human Rights Committee (UNHRC) as “a landmark decision establishing women’s right to access to legal abortion.” The case was initiated by the Center for Reproductive Rights together with the Latin American and Caribbean Committee for the Defense of Women’s Rights (CLADEM) and the Counseling Center for the Defense of Women’s Rights (DEMUS) on behalf of Karen Llontoy, a young Peruvian woman who was not permitted to kill by abortion her anencephalic unborn child. Through this case the...

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has hailed the Iraqi people for "their incredible courage" in voting in large numbers on a constitutional referendum but cast doubt on whether this would lead to an easing of violence. "I think the Iraqi population showed incredible courage, going to vote in large numbers despite the security situation on the ground," the UN chief said. "We had hoped that the constitutional process would have been an exercise that would have been totally inclusive, and pull together all the Iraqis, helping with reconciliation. "Obviously, that did not happen and has not happened." He said that...

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan will meet US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in Washington tomorrow, his spokesman said in New York. Spokesman Stephane Dujarric did not say what issues would be discussed during the meeting between the UN chief and Ms Rice, who have met on several occasions here over the past week during the UN General Assembly session. Mr Annan will also use the day-long visit to deliver a keynote address at a forum on Africa held in conjunction with the annual legislative conference of the Congressional Black Caucus.