OxBlog

Friday, November 15, 2002

# Posted 7:41 PM by Ariel David Adesnik  

KOFI'S AT IT AGAIN. The NY Times reports that:
Secretary General Kofi Annan said today that the United States seemed to have a lower threshold for going to war in Iraq than other nations on the United Nations Security Council.

After meeting with President Bush, Mr. Annan urged the White House to be "a bit patient" against any rush toward military action. If it comes, he added, military action would have to be based on credible evidence of Iraq's obstruction, and not a "flimsy" excuse to go to war.


We all know that Annan has never been good on the Iraq issue. But I think the remarks in the NYT are more of a political maneuver than they are actual criticism of the United States. Annan wants to preserve his credibility with all of the members of the Security Council whom he pressured to vote for Resolution 1441. Presumably, he had to tell them he would stop Bush from going cowboy once the resolution passed. Still, if Annan keeps this up he'll hurt his credibility with the US, increasing the chance that it will ignore the UN completely.

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