After proclaiming a cease-fire, Colonel Muammar Qadhafi’s regime cynically ordered its troops to attack Benghazi, the leading rebel stronghold, in defiance of the U.N. Security Council resolution prohibiting attacks on civilians. The regime hopes to consolidate control in Libya’s second-largest city before the U.N.-backed military forces can begin counter-attacks. Once entrenched in the city, Qadhafi’s thugs can wreak vengeance on opposition supporters with minimal risk of attack from U.N.-backed forces pledged to halt civilian deaths. Qadhafi seeks to exploit the fact that he is much more willing to shed Libyan …
At the United Nation’s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) Summit in New York this week, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Spain’s Prime Minister José Luis Zapatero both called for a global financial transaction tax to fund foreign aid projects to lift the world’s poor out of poverty. Sounding more like a populist politician than an international civil servant, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon chimed in supportively, warning developed countries not to “balance budgets on the backs of the poor.” Trouble is, there is little evidence that the vast sums of tax dollars …
In a startlingly blunt manner, French President Nicolas Sarkozy today demanded that the United Nations be reformed and argued that key international issues could not be resolved by negotiations among 192 U.N. member countries. According to the AFP account, Sarkozy announced that “The UN is absolutely indispensable and yet at the same time, it’s not working … I am certain that we need to reform the United Nations, otherwise the United Nations will end up in an impasse.” He went on to criticize the practice of negotiating agreements among all …
Nicolas Sarkozy, the French President, brokered a deal this week between Russia and Georgia, and the Russians are declaring victory. Sarkozy, as the current EU President, negotiated the deal with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, and later got it approved by Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili. In the deal, Georgia pledged “not to use force against its two breakaway republics – a key Russian demand,” in return Russia would begin removing its troops from a safety zone in Georgian territory currently occupied by the Russian military. That Russia is declaring victory should …
