Recast in Key Iraq Role, U.N. Envoys Are Wary

[Snellius]

UNITED NATIONS, April 17 — The United Nations, once snubbed and excluded from the task of shaping Iraq's future, suddenly finds itself pressed to play the major role in that effort, but it is taking up the task with some foreboding.

"There is a mixture of vindication on the one hand and great apprehension on the other," said Edward Mortimer, a senior aide to Secretary General Kofi Annan.

Mr. Mortimer contrasted the recent calls for assistance from President Bush with the disparagement he said the United Nations had become used to from the administration. "It's quite nice when you've been generally dissed about your irrelevancy and then suddenly have people coming on bended knee and saying, `We need you to come back,' " he said. "On the other hand, it's quite unnerving to feel you're being projected into a very violent and volatile situation where you might be regarded as an agent or faithful servant of a power that has incurred great hostility."

With time running out on the June 30 deadline for transfer of power, the United Nations is being looked to as the only institution that can confer immediate global legitimacy on the American goal of bringing representative government to Iraq.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/18/international/middleeast/18NATI.html

[NNN0LHI]

1. The UN is going to tell Bush to go fuck himself n/t

[ewagner]

2. My preference

Is that the UN extract a "pound of flesh" from Bush and Company and maybe even a personal apology from Colin Powell for making a presentation filled with lies to the General Assembly. Bush* needs to be humbled in return for UN support.

[acmavm]

3. I'm really torn here. One the one hand I would like to see the UN go in

and try to find some kind of resolution to this problems so that Americans and Iraqis can quit dying for no other reason than a bunch of lying greedy bastards thought they could drop some bombs, kill a few thousand people, and cow the Middle East into submission.

But on the other hand I am very much against the UN coming to this administration's rescue, even becoming the fall guy for them in civil war breaks out.

What this reminds me of is the story about Henry Plantagenet (Henry II) and the penance proscribed on him by the Pope because of the murder of Thomas Beckett. Maybe they could humiliate him in some way like Henry was. The story goes that he had to stand in the snow for two days barefooted as penance and an admission of his 'guilt' for causing Beckett's death. Wonder what the UN could do to bush* & the rest of his henchmen? Make them stand amongst all the dead bodies of the innocent that they caused to die? But even that wouldn't satisfactory.

[ultramega]

4. make him hold a press conference every night til Nov. 4