UNESCO Prize to Brazil leader

[Judi Lynn]

Thursday, 9 July 2009
UNESCO Prize to Brazil leader

France: Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva was awarded the Felix Houphount-Boigny Peace Prize, by UNESCO, an occasion in which he described armed conflicts as an affront to human rationality.

Justifying aggression as a preventive measure is unacceptable, as it is also inadmissible to solve differences among civilizations with conflict, the leader said in his speech.

Lula gave thanks and said he shared this prize with women and men who devoted their lives to peace.

The South American leader stressed the fact that Latin America is living a whole new vigorous moment of democracy that had its origin in past and historic segments that demand a more solidarious society.

We can no longer accept backward steps, reason why we fiercely condemn the coup in Honduras, he stressed.

UNESCO Director General Koichiro Matsuura; Senegal President Abdoulaye Wade and Portuguese Prime Minister Jose Socrates attended the award ceremony.

http://www.dailynews.lk/2009/07/09/wld08.asp

[magbana]

1. Felix Houphouet-Boigny (name misspelled in article) was the first

president of the Ivory Coast. He identified closely with the French government and that, combined with the fact that he was involved in deposing one African president (Kwame Nkrumah-Ghana) and possibly involved in an assassination of a young revolutionary president (Thomas Sankara-Burkina Faso), most of his peers in West Africa did not trust him. He died in the early 1990's.

As they say, for what it's worth.

[Judi Lynn]

2. How strange. Sounds very similar to giving Henry Kissinger a Peace Prize.

Thank you for supplying the missing reality!