If you track the UN through the Kofi era – first Rwanda and Darfur, then oil-for-food and then this new report that the investigation into the Hariri assassination has been doctored – you see a record that is sinister indeed. I hope the Secretary General’s motivation in all this is either knee-jerk anti-Americanism or greed or some combination of the two. Otherwise I am at a loss. I would have no idea why the man looked the other way twice from the slaughter of citizens of his native Africa, then enabled the looting of the Iraqi people to the tune of billions of dollars and now seems to be, at the very least, hand maiden to a coverup of the homicidal Alawite regime in Syria. Gross incompetence can’t explain it. The behavior is too consistent.
But as for the Syrian situation, perhaps Kofi’s track record has become so embarrassing that this time no one will pay attention to a word he says. Liberating the Syrian people from the sadistic Assads is too important. Let’s make sure this interesting tidbit from the Times report is not ignored:
Mr Annan had pledged repeatedly through his chief spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, that he would not change a word of the report by Detlev Mehlis, a German prosecutor. But computer tracking showed that the final edit began at about 11.38am on Thursday – a minute after Herr Mehlis began a meeting with Mr Annan to present his report. The names of Maher al-Assad, General Shawkat and the others were apparently removed at 11.55am, after the meeting ended.
At a press conference yesterday Herr Mehlis insisted that Mr Annan had not pressurised him into making changes. “No one outside of the report team influenced these changes and no changes whatsoever were suggested by the Secretary-General,” he said.
For the record, a pdf of the Mehlis report.
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