South Korea's Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon
Posted on 10/09/2006 7:05:18 AM PDT by BulletBobCo
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) -- South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon will be formally nominated as U.N. secretary-general on Monday, ironically only hours after North Korea defied the world body by announcing a nuclear test.
The U.N. Security Council will cast its votes, effectively anointing Ban as the successor to Secretary-General Kofi Annan whose 10 years in office expire on Dececmber 31. Six other candidates withdrew, leaving members to vote for Ban only.
The 192-member U.N. General Assembly must give final approval to Ban's nomination, which usually follows within a week or two. The vote is expected to be positive.
Some diplomats, including Japan's U.N. Ambassador Kenzo Oshima, have speculated that North Korea's announcement on October 3 of plans to carry out the underground nuclear test was timed, in part, to coincide with Ban's selection in an effort to get world attention.
With Security Council members meeting anyway, Japan, the current council president, as well as the United States, made clear last week the 15-member council would hold immediate consultations if North Korea conducted its first test.
The council on Friday urged North Korea not to carry out a test, warning Pyongyang of unspecified consequences if it did.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
South Korea's Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon
KOREAN KONSEQUENCES
CLINTON GAVE NORTH KOREA THE BOMB
By: Geoff Metcalf
Notwithstanding the protestations of blind democrat sycophants, former President Bill Clinton was a foreign policy disaster. The consequences of his geopolitical myopia and epic penchant for doing exactly the wrong thing are personified in the recent acknowledgment of North Korea.
So they lied…and North Korea IS working to develop nuclear weapons. You got a problem with that?
Arguably one of the worst foreign policy screw-ups since FDR sat down with Stalin in Yalta, North Korea fessed up to their nuke work. Work, which would have been highly unlikely, had not the Clinton regime showered billions of dollars in foreign aid throughout the 1990s and earmarked a chunk for North Korea’s nuclear energy program. In 1994 Clinton/Gore earmarked aid primarily for the construction of nuclear reactors worth up to $6 billion...
http://www.etherzone.com/2002/metc102902.shtml
Anybody know this guys 'politics'?
Is he an appeaser (like the current South Korea administration), a Hawk, a nonparitsan Internationalist, a longtime member of the UN bureaucracy like Koffi?
He's Secretary General of the United Nations. It's probably safe to say that he's somewhere between 'Right of Lenin' and 'Left of Che Guevarra'
Because WE allow them to.
Actually, my wife and I have read some about him, and he's a hard linder against North Korea, and pretty pro-American, like most South Koreans. It's a myth that most South Koreans don't like America. Bush and Bolton have responded quite favorably to his nomination and so has England. Based on his past reputation, he would be a HUGE improvement over muslim sympathizer Kofe Annan. Though it would be hard to find anyone worse.
I don't believe that to be the case. Where did you hear that from? I've heard a dramatically different opinion of him based on his past comments. And I don't think Bush and Bolton would be supporting his nomination if he was a weak appeasist leftist sympathizer to socialist states and the like. It stands to reason the U.S. would use its veto power if another Annan type comes up for the position.
Yes we should have been using the kind if diplomacy that Clinton and Albright used for eight years, which was bending over and grabbing the ankles, GIVING North Korea the technology and materials they needed to make this nuclear device and surely others, possible. But then, that’s Bush’s fault too. The media has already spun it as though North Korea didn’t start their nuclear weapons program until January 20th, 2001, and they weren’t doing ANY nuclear research before then, despite Clinton having had provided North Korea with nuclear materials, necessary equipment, and other necessary technology, accepting a promise not to use them for nuclear weapons. Accepting a promise from a man that has never kept any promises he’s made all his life. He learned well from his father.
The dictator of North Korea gladly starves his family to maintain his military and chemical, biological, and now nuclear arsenals. What promise can be trusted from a man who starves his people to maintain his totally unnecessary military? The only wars on that peninsula the past 100 years have been started by nations that were not democracies. Japan, and North Korea. Since WWII, Japan has not attacked North Korea, and South Korea has never attacked North Korea since the two were split.
One thing is for sure, and it’s a point the democrats will NEVER admit to or make themselves for certain. Of the three most hostile and unstable nations in the world that were sponsors of terror and seekers of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, the only one that we are CERTAIN has no chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, is Iraq, the one we used military force against to remove the dictator and start a democratically elected government. That’s the bottom line. Oh, and Libya voluntarily giving up their chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs because dictator Qadaffi was so scared we’d do to him what we did to Hussein, that’s a bonus. When military action was taken against Iraq, their banned weapons programs ceased to exist, and so did Libya’s by proxy. And Iraq did have WMD, there are tons of banned materials that were removed the past three years from Iraq that he swore he didn’t have, including the hundreds of sarin gas long range artillery shells, and the nearly three tons of enriched (yellow cake) uranium that was removed from Iraq in 2004, which Hussein swore to the world he didn’t have. Oh, Joe Wilson also swore Hussein didn’t have it. And yet, there it is. Hussein and Joe Wilson and the Democrats alike say the same thing to Americans every time; "What are you going to believe? Us? Or your lying eyes?" The idea that Iraq had no WMD before March of 2003 is the biggest new urban legend. It’s flatly untrue and military storage sites in America and Iraq and full of banner weapons materials that shouldn’t have been there, but were, and it’s documented for anyone who is more concerned with reality over their obsessive political agenda.
The nations in which diplomacy has been used, at the urging of the Democrats, North Korea and Iran, well lets see, they break all promises, ignore all deadlines, and North Korea now has nuclear weapons, and Iran is close to having them, if they don’t already. And this crap that Bush didn’t use the right kind of diplomacy is such a red herring. There are only so many kinds of diplomacy. Clinton got NO WHERE with North Korea or Iran, they had eight years of unfettered access to whatever materials they wanted, and furthered their chemical and biological and nuclear weapons programs with nary a "boo" from the Clinton White House. Now Democrats continue to rant about "talking" to Iran and North Korea. I swear, the people leading the liberal charge for diplomacy with North Korea and Iran are the stupidest smart people in the whole world. There is only one thing that radical tyrannical dictators like Kim Jong-Il and Ahmadinejad understand. Force of arms and pounding on a table. They do not respond to diplomacy, they laugh at us inside when we "dialogue" with them and think we’re fools for just talking. Diplomacy has pointed out the weakest of all world governments in these situations, just like before WWI and WWII. The sooner America understands that, the better. Otherwise, that TV show "Jericho" will become the new 9-11 reality, and the fault will belong exclusively with those who want to use "diplomacy" with North Kore and Iran.
That just makes no sense. Why not veto him also and force someone that is actually pro-American for a change? But if this North Korean man isn't pro-American then why are people saying he is? That serves no purpose. We do have a veto vote, so it makes no sense not to keep using that until someone is nominated we like that takes a strong stand. If that means the U.N. doesn't have a Secretary General for a couple years, then sobeit. It's not like the U.N. accomplishes anything with a weak Secretary General anyway so let them not have one for a while. They're equally neutered both ways.
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TLR, could we get your two cents on where this guy's political leanings are?
Excellent & timely
Very timely!
I'm sorry devolve, I did what you sometimes do - missed your post in my pings. Just now saw this. Thank you!
"Congratulations, Kim."
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