Human Rights

UNO Theme A - Page 9

Article Index
UNO Theme A
Page 2
Page 3
Page 4
Page 5
Page 6
Page 7
Page 8
Page 9
Page 10
Page 11
Page 12
All Pages


US president George Bush with admonition from British prime minister Margarat Thatcher not to be wobbly ( in fixing Saddam Hussein ) went into war  without any clear strategic  objectives, leaving behind more problems. US advice to Iraqi Kurds and Shiite to rebel without any assistance to them led first to massacre of Baathists and then even bigger massacres of Kurds and Shiites. Who should be held responsible for that !The British role in misguiding the Americans with its colonial mental warp has been horrendous. Then it was Thatcher now it is Tony Blair, who might escape fall after the resignations of his close aides but he has done enough to earn punishment terrorism on Britain or British interests .

Great Britain was at the back of world wars and consequent problems and other inequities and sufferings of the human race during the last two centuries. UK, now a second rate power with its obsession to play a role bigger than it merits or its boots by hanging on to the coat tails of USA, would surely invite hubris one day. Western corporate news networks and biased broadcasting corporations have always derided the many palaces built for security by Saddam Hussein. Where are the Americans now working from.  From the same palaces.

De Mello, UN special representative in Iraq was a charming and successful international diplomat who rose fast specially during 1990s.  But finally the hubris caught up with the debonair Brazilian diplomat playing a tightrope game for the USA and the west, whose creature UN has inexorably become and paid the ultimate price with his life.  In an interview after his death, de Mello’s mother made public her premonitions about her son’s death, once she learnt that he had to wear a flak jacket in Baghdad.  She added that her son was reluctant to go to Iraq having just been made Human Rights Commissioner in place of Mary Robinson, whose forthright talk did not endear her to USA.  

De Mello thus became a sacrificial knight in the western Christian world’s centuries old game to dominate others, more recently since the USSR collapsed.

Soon after de Mello death, CNN got Richard Holbrook former US ambassador to UN on line for comments.  Apart from eulogizing the fine work de Mello had done, Holbrook underlined how he had promoted US interests all over the world during his 3 decade long career. He further admitted in Newsweek, "Sergio was usually advancing America's long-term interests [in Iraq].  He saw nothing strange or incompatible in this. " Prior to the announcement of his appointment to Baghdad, De Mello was flown to Washington for private talks at the White House with President Bush and National Security Adviser Condolezza Rice. The repeated statements that de Mello was a front runner to succeed Kofi Annan clearly lets the game out, showing that he was Washington’s man.  And Iraqis and Arabs know that too. Unlike UN secretary general, de Cueillar and others, who got a second term as UNSG, Boutros Boutros Ghali was denied a second UN term for his forthrightness and not kowtowing to the Americans.  Probably more than most UN bureaucrats, de Mello was a representative of the shifting of power in the UN in the 1990s when he made his career.