Free Republic

Canadian killed from UN force complained his position shielding Hizbullah Dr. Aaron Lerner Date: 26 July 2006 "...the tragic loss of a soldier yesterday who I happen to know and I think probably is from my Regiment. We've received e-mails from him a few days ago and he described the fact that he was taking within - in one case - three meters of his position "for tactical necessity - not being targeted". Now that's veiled speech in the military and what he was telling us was Hizbullah fighters were all over his position and the IDF were (sic) targeting...

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan today said he was "shocked" at Israel's "apparently deliberate targeting" of a UN post in Lebanon, in which up to four UN observers were killed. Mr Annan described the strike as a "co-ordinated artillery and aerial attack on a long established and clearly marked UN post." He said it took place "despite personal assurances given to me by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert that UN positions would be spared Israeli fire." "Furthermore, General Alain Pelligrini, the UN Force Commander in south Lebanon, had been in repeated contact with Israeli officers throughout the day on Tuesday, stressing...

UNITED NATIONS, July 25 (Reuters) - U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan called on Israel on Tuesday to investigate what he termed the "apparently deliberate targeting" by Israeli defense forces of a U.N. observer post in Lebanon. The?¬Ô?1¥è ȅƢ??¥ê?ƃÂt©©?x)our U.N. military observers who were part of the U.N. peacekeeping mission in southern Lebanon, U.N. and Lebanese officials said "I am shocked and deeply distressed by the apparently deliberate targeting by Israeli Defense Forces of a U.N. Observer post in southern Lebanon," Annan said in a statement issued at U.N. headquarters in New York. He was in Rome for an international meeting on...

UN peacekeepers have abandoned at least 20 babies fathered with poverty-stricken Timorese women, an investigation has shown. The UN investigation has also uncovered a culture of cover-up, in which babies born to peacekeepers and sex crimes committed by its personnel over seven years have been kept secret because of a "fear of shame and embarrassment". A report on the investigation recommends that a policy of zero tolerance of sexual misconduct be enforced on UN staff. The report reveals for the first time babies born to UN peacekeepers have been abandoned without financial support. Their mothers have been stigmatised and in...

(AP) PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti -- U.N. peacekeepers on Friday found the bodies of 16 people believed killed in a surge of gang violence, the latest sign the Caribbean nation's capital may be slipping back into disorder after months of relative calm. The troops from Sri Lanka the bodies in the southern Port-au-Prince slum of Martissant, a U.N. statement said. The slum was the site of a recent spate of gunbattles between warring gangs. The victims apparently were shot to death in an hours-long gunfight among Haitian gang members fighting for control of the area, said Pierre Esperance, a local human...

KHARTOUM, 05/28 - The third and last batch of 130 Chinese peacekeepers arrived in Sudan on Saturday, completing deployment of a total of 430 Chinese peacekeeping troops to the country. The Chinese peacekeepers landed in El-Obeid, central Sudan and immediately reported for duty at the logistics base of the UN peacekeeping mission in Sudan. They were to stay in El-Obeid for Saturday night and then travel the next day to Wau in southern Sudan, where the barracks of the Chinese peacekeepers are based. The second batch of 135 Chinese peacekeepers arrived in El-Obeid on Friday following the arrival of another...

THE voice of Osama bin Laden was heard across the world again yesterday with the broadcast of a new tape in which he sought to link al-Qaeda with both Palestinian militants and the brutal civil war in Sudan.In his first message for three months, bin Laden said that the West’s decision to cut off funds to the Hamas-controlled Palestinian Authority proved that it was conducting “a Zionist crusader war on Islam”. He also spoke about the Darfur crisis in Sudan, which has caused 180,000 deaths, calling on “holy warriors” to defend Islam and “prepare for a long war” against a...

New York - Measures will be taken to strengthen African Union forces in Sudan's Darfur region while the UN is getting ready to take over the peacekeeping operation in the troubled territory, Secretary General Kofi Annan said Friday. Some of the 7,000 African troops in Darfur will be integrated in the UN operation, Annan said. The AU decided Friday to extend its presence in Darfur until September after announcing its intention to pull out because of the lack of logistical resources. 'Between now and the time that the UN takes over, measures will be taken to strengthen the African Union...

KHARTOUM, Sudan Mar 8, 2006 (AP)— Tens of thousands of Sudanese marched through Khartoum on Wednesday, protesting plans to deploy of U.N. peacekeepers in conflict-torn Darfur and demanding the expulsion of the top U.N. and U.S. envoys in the country. The Sudanese government also increased its opposition to the deployment, with a top official warning that violence will only increase if U.N. troops move in to replace African Union peacekeepers. "If the U.N arrives the troubles will spread in the region," Mohamed Elsamani, Sudan's minister of state for foreign affairs, said in Nairobi. Officials from the European Union, the United...

Sexual abuse charges against U.N. peacekeepers remain unacceptably high due to a persistent "culture of dismissiveness" in field missions, a U.N. diplomat said on Thursday. It could take three to four more years for a reform program to fully take hold, Jordan's U.N. ambassador, Prince Zeid Ra'ad Zeid al-Hussein, said in updating the U.N. Security Council on how the problem was being addressed. A spike in allegations was "not entirely unexpected" since a system was now in now place to facilitate complaints, he said, and all the reform elements had not yet been implemented. Al-Hussein was asked by the United...

KINSHASA (Reuters) - Thousands of civilians have taken refuge on floating islands in the lakes of Congo's Katanga province to escape rape and murder by government and militia fighters, a top U.N. humanitarian official said on Thursday. Some 120,000 people have fled their homes in the remote Mitwaba area, where hundreds of women have been raped during fighting between the army and former pro-government militiamen that U.N. peacekeepers are unable to control, he added. Congo is staggering toward elections, due later this year, but fighting continues in Katanga and elsewhere in the lawless east, where minerals are plentiful and gunmen...

UNITED NATIONS - The American ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, criticized Secretary-General Annan yesterday for employing double standards over sending U.N. troops to the war-torn Sudanese region of Darfur. Mr. Bolton said that while Mr. Annan has publicly chided Washington for leadership shortcomings on Darfur, he has not encouraged Africans and Arabs to do more, and has failed to push his own U.N. underlings hard enough. Mr. Bolton signaled America's sense of urgency on Darfur when he elevated the issue to the top of the Security Council's agenda on assuming the council's presidency for the month of February....

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — U.N. peacekeepers opened fire Monday on Haitians protesting election results, killing at least one and wounding four, witnesses said as flaming roadblocks paralyzed the capital. Hundreds of screaming demonstrators elsewhere stormed into an upscale hotel housing an electoral office in the hills above Port-au-Prince and helicopters landed on the roof to evacuate guests. Associated Press journalists saw the body of a man in the street in the Tabarre neighborhood, a T-shirt bearing the image of leading candidate Rene Preval soaked in blood. Witnesses said Jordanian U.N. peacekeepers opened fire on them, killing two and wounding four....

We have to live in and manage a world in which the threat and use of force remain an ever present reality. The material capacity, economic efficiency, political organization and military skills in the use of force determine the international power hierarchy. Great powers rise and fall on the tide of history. Rivalry between them caused two world wars in the last century that strengthened the determination to tame the use of military force as an accepted part of sovereign statehood. The right to wage war in self-defense was kept by states, but otherwise the decision to authorize wars was...

KINSHASA, Congo -- The United Nations pulled its remaining peacekeepers out of the national park where eight Guatemalan peacekeepers were killed in an apparent gunbattle with Ugandan rebels, a U.N. spokesman said Tuesday. Hans-Jakob Reichen, U.N. military spokesman for eastern Congo, said the peacekeepers were withdrawn because they had completed a two-week mission to clear Garamba National Park of rebel forces. "It was decided to pull peacekeepers out of the park since any suspected rebels had melted into the jungle," Reichen said. The park straddles Congo's remote northeastern border with Sudan. Monday's violence marked the second-biggest single loss of life...

Bangladeshi United Nations peacekeepers have pulled out of a camp in western Ivory Coast after clashing with supporters of President Laurent Gbagbo. Four people are reported to have been killed when a UN base in Guiglo, 300km (187 miles) from Abidjan, was attacked. France has called for calm in towns and cities in the government-controlled south after three days of protests. Mr Gbagbo supporters are angry at international mediators wanting to dissolve the pro-Gbagbo parliament. The ruling party subsequently pulled out of the transitional government and UN-backed peace talks and is calling on the 10,000 French and UN troops keeping...

United Nations peacekeepers in Ivory Coast's main city are under siege by supporters of President Laurent Gbagbo. More than 2,000 protesters have tried to force their way into UN headquarters in Abidjan, and had to be held back by warning shots and tear gas. More than 300 troops have been forced to withdraw from two UN bases in the west of the country after clashes that left at least four protesters dead.

EIGHT UN officials have been suspended with pay as part of an investigation into the world body's procurement services following scandals in the oil-for-food program in Iraq, UN officials said this morning. The investigation by the UN Office of Internal Oversight Services is the result of a probe into contracts in the UN peacekeeping department, which is fielding some 85,000 troops, police and civilians around the world. "There is an audit being done of peacekeeping department management," UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said. "As a result of that audit, which also took a look at the procurement department ... we have...

The commander of a United Nations peacekeeping force in Haiti shot himself dead on Saturday, U.N. officials said. Brazilian Lt. Gen. Urano Teixeira da Matta Bacellar killed himself in a room at the Montana hotel in the troubled Caribbean country's capital, the officials said. Few other details were immediately available. Teixeira da Matta took over the U.N. peacekeeping force at the end of August. The mission, known by its acronym MINUSTAH, was sent to Haiti to keep the peace between supporters and foes of former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide after Aristide was ousted following a monthlong armed revolt in February 2004....

Diplomacy: Remember the fuss about John Bolton, how Democrats stalled his confirmation as U.N. ambassador and depicted him as a threat to the world order? Well, his recess appointment is having a salutary impact. That's not how it was supposed to turn out, at least according to the Democrats and the media hysterics. Bolton was the tough-talking undersecretary of state who was once so impolitic as to quip that it wouldn't much matter if the top 10 stories of the East River edifice were knocked over. Mix in some rumors about Bolton bullying State Department subordinates — a delicious fantasy,...