OxBlog

Tuesday, September 05, 2006

# Posted 12:18 AM by Ariel David Adesnik  

I HOPE HE SAID IT WITH A STRAIGHT FACE:
The United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan, said Friday that President Bashar al-Assad of Syria had pledged to respect an embargo on weapons going into Lebanon and to help secure the border with added guards and a greater liaison with the Beirut authorities...

Syria is widely believed, along with Iran, to provide the Lebanese-based militia Hezbollah with money and weapons, and Mr. Annan was asked at an airport news conference in Damascus if he thought the steps he was announcing would succeed in blocking illegal arms shipments.

“I think it can happen,” he replied. “It may not be 100 percent, but it will make quite a lot of difference if the government puts in place the measures the government has discussed with me.” (NYT, Sept. 2)
The Secretary General followed up his first-rate performance in Lebanon with a visit to Iran, where:
Mr. Annan, speaking after the meeting at a joint news conference with Manouchehr Mottaki, the foreign minister, said the Iranian president “reaffirmed his country’s support for the implementation of Resolution 1701 and agrees with me that we should do everything to strengthen the territorial integrity of Lebanon.”
Sounds good to me.
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Comments:
Has anyone ever tabulated how many of the demands and conditions enumerated on those 1700+ UN resolutions have eventually been fulfilled?
 
"A bomb blast near the southern Lebanese city of Sidon has seriously wounded a senior intelligence officer and killed four of his aides and bodyguards.

Officials said Samir Shehadeh's car was hit by a remote-controlled bomb as he drove past the village of Rmeileh.

Col Shehadeh was an investigator into the killing of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in early 2005."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/5315098.stm
 
And about Iran...

"Iran says it will go ahead and sponsor a conference in the autumn to examine the scientific evidence supporting the Holocaust, dismissing it as exaggerated."

...

"Ahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, has already called the Nazis' Second World War slaughter of six million European Jews a myth and said that the Jewish state should be wiped off the map or moved to Germany or the United States."

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/318CADA8-C505-45D8-B937-FCADD657BEC1.htm
 
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