From JPost.com » Opinion » Editorials » Aug. 30, 2006 8:23 ...
Six years ago, when Israel withdrew from Lebanon, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan ... met with Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah. "Let me say that Hizbullah... is a player in the south of Lebanon... I did tell Mr. Nasrallah that Hizbullah exercised restraint, responsibility and discipline after the withdrawal, and that we would want to see that continue, and I'm sure from the indications that he gave me that he intends to do it," Annan said after his meeting in June 2000....
...Annan did not, of course, meet with Nasrallah - who in any case is difficult to find these days - this week in Beirut. But Prime Minister Ehud Olmert might suggest to his guest today that Annan not go ahead with a worse meeting tentatively planned for later this week: with Nasrallah's backers in Teheran.
....Why would Annan want pictures of him meeting politely with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a man he has effectively and correctly called an anti-Semitic bigot, broadcast around the world? ... Ahmadinejad has repeatedly denied the Holocaust and as late as yesterday reiterated his arguments for Israel's elimination - an act of genocide.
...when asked whether the new mandate of UNIFIL included deployment along the Lebanese-Syrian border, Annan strangely misrepresented Resolution 1701: "We have no such plans at the moment. As I said not long ago, it is not in [UNIFIL's] mandate to deploy to the Lebanese-Syrian border."
Actually, operative paragraph 14 "calls upon the government of Lebanon to... prevent the entry in Lebanon without its consent of arms or related materiel and requests UNIFIL as authorized in paragraph 11 [defining UNIFIL's expanded mandate] to assist the government of Lebanon at its request."
...Why didn't Annan say that he expects that Lebanon will fulfill such an embargo and that 1701 explicitly places UNIFIL at Lebanon's disposal to assist in this task?
Obviously, as urgent and necessary as it is to disarm Hizbullah, it is even more critical to prevent Hizbullah from restocking the enormous arsenal it just lost. This must be done both by ensuring that there are consequences for Syria and Iran if they attempt to violate the new UN embargo, and by insisting that Lebanon enforce the embargo, presumably with UNIFIL's help.
Annan may be right that the key to disarming Hizbullah is for the Lebanese government to build a consensus for doing so, rather than UNIFIL leading the way by force. But if UNIFIL will not disarm Hizbullah, and will not even help enforce an embargo on the border, what is it there for?
And if Annan himself is deflating Resolution 1701's key embargo provision, as well as providing Teheran's genocidal bigots with proof that they can defy the world and still merit a prestigious diplomatic visit, is he part of the solution, or of the problem?
[SL: ...and to top it all off he has shifty, beady eyes and looks uncomforatble in Israel. Is his conscience troubling him? ]
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