- Secretary General Annan is refusing to comment to the
press on the decision of the world body to give a platform to one of the
world's most repressive dictators, Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, to compare
President Bush and Prime Minister Blair to Hitler and Mussolini. Maybe
Congress can get him to say something as it continues its probe as to why
America is funding the world body. Let Congress ask about the applause
that greeted Mr. Mugabe at the U.N. conference this week in Rome in connection
with the 60th birthday of the Food and Agriculture Organization. Not only
did Mr. Mugabe compare President Bush and Prime Minister Blair to Hitler
and Mussolini but he called them "international terrorists."
It pumped the crowd.
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- It would be ironical, if it weren't so offensive, that
a U.N. body whose stated aim is to lead "international efforts to
defeat hunger" invites a dictator responsible for turning a once prosperous
country into an economic basket-case to address it. Mr. Mugabe's Marxist
land-reform policies have led to once productive farms being ruined. If
there was racial injustice in Zimbabwe, as there was, this was clearly
not the way to deal with it. Now more than 4 million Zimbabweans need aid.
Poverty, disease, and starvation are rampant across the country.
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- When questioned on the suitability of inviting a despot
like Mr. Mugabe to address the meeting, a spokesman for the FAO, Nicholas
Parsons, told The New York Sun that all heads of member states were invited,
and as Zimbabwe has been a "member in good standing" since the
1980s, it is "appropriate" that it, like all members, could attend.
Only under the auspices of the United Nations could one of the world's
most repressive dictators be reelected to a Human Rights Commission - a
feather Mr. Mugabe placed in his cap earlier this year despite a habit
of rigging elections and beating opponents - before being cheered for denouncing
two leaders who liberated a country from another repressive dictator. And
now the head of the whole organization stands mum while asking for more
money from the alleged Hitlers and Mussolinis.
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- http://www.nysun.com/article/21792
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