Free Republic

President Trump may have short-term successes but will ultimately fail, and “reality therapy” — including checks and balances in the U.S. system — will make him realize that “things are not as simple” as they appear, former U.N. secretary-general Kofi Annan said this week. Speaking Tuesday at the Forum for the Future of Agriculture, an annual event held in Brussels, Annan was answering a moderator’s questions about Trump’s executive order reversing the Obama administration’s environmental regulations. British journalist and BBC “HARDtalk” presenter Stephen Sackur asked Annan whether it matters that the leader of the world’s most powerful economy is saying...

Emails released by the State Department on Friday show that Hillary Clintons longtime friend Sidney Blumenthal reached out to her on behalf of a former United Kingdom diplomat who was interested in setting up secret channels between insurgents and governments. Clinton was receptive to the idea which came via Blumenthal from Jonathan Powell, former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blairs chief of staff. (Quote) Hillary, Jonathan Powell has launched a new NGO that has already initiated some very interesting work below the radar, (Unquote) Blumenthal wrote in the March 18, 2012 email. (Quote)Sid We are trying to replicate what we did...

TEL AVIV – A staunch denier of the Holocaust who long served as the deputy of late PLO leader Yasser Arafat served on the committee that invented the military doctrine used by President Obama as the main justification for U.S. and international airstrikes against Libya. As WND first reported, billionaire philanthropist George Soros is a primary funder and key proponent of the Global Centre for Responsibility to Protect, the world's leading organization pushing the military doctrine. Several of the doctrine's main founders sit on multiple boards with Soros. The doctrine and its founders, as WND reported, have been deeply tied...

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — International envoy Kofi Annan told the U.N. Security Council Thursday that the situation in Syria is "bleak" and expressed alarm at reports that government troops are still carrying out military operations in towns where U.N. observers are not present. He expressed particular concern at media reports that government troops entered the central city of Hama on Monday after U.N. observers departed, firing automatic weapons and killing a significant number of people. "If confirmed, this is totally unacceptable and reprehensible," he said. The joint U.N.-Arab League envoy said the speedy deployment of the 300-strong U.N. observer force...

A top economic adviser to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan told African countries yesterday to refuse to pay their huge debts if rich countries did not cancel them. American economist Jeffrey Sachs made the comment to a conference on hunger on the eve of a summit of the heads of state of the African Union, which estimates sub-Saharan Africa has foreign debts of $US201 billion ($283 billion). "The time has come to end this charade. The debts are unaffordable," said Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University and special adviser to Annan on global anti-poverty targets. "If they won't...

Kenya should set up a special tribunal to try those behind last year's post-election bloodshed or let the International Criminal Court step in to restore public confidence, Western diplomats said on Thursday. Kenya's coalition government is under pressure from Kenyans and foreign donors alike to punish those behind the violence, which was the worst in the nation's post-independence history, killing at least 1,300 people and displacing 300,000. In a statement, 25 diplomatic missions said that if the government was unwilling or unable to set up a special tribunal, it should let the International Criminal Court (ICC) take over. "A special...

August 14, 2005 -- LONDON — The $21.3 billion United Nations oil-for-food scandal has now widened to include the brother of U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan. Kobina Annan, the Ghanaian ambassador to Morocco, is said by investigators to be "connected" to an African businessman at the center of the scandal. The probe into Kobina's dealings are at an early stage and he has not been interviewed. However, investigators are understood to suspect that Michael Wilson, an African businessman, and Kobina had a business relationship at the time of the scandal. A source close to the investigation said: "We believe Kobina Annan...

As Kenya swayed in the wind of post-election killings, displacements and dispossession in February, last year, a VIP ‘messenger’ in the person of Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwetu met Mr Mwai Kibaki. The day was February 26 and the leader whose declaration as winner of disputed presidential poll by Electoral Commission had refused to cede more than he had to his rival Mr Raila Odinga. Raila’s Orange Democratic Movement, which claimed its victory had been stolen, had put its last card on the table — they had reached the ‘irreducible minimum’. With Government affairs being run by a half-Cabinet Kibaki formed...

Former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan says 'radical' policy changes may be needed to create jobs. The worldwide economic recession has exposed a "crisis of global governance" that can only be addressed by the radical reform of the United Nations, former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Wednesday as the World Economic Forum got under way in Switzerland. "The current architecture of managing global affairs is broken and needs to be fixed," Annan said on the opening morning of the five-day annual meeting of global political and business leaders. "We have major new players coming on the scene and they need to...

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter today said Zimbabwe's humanitarian crisis was far worse than he could have imagined and expressed dismay that Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe and his government refused to acknowledge the problem even existed. "The entire basic structure in education, healthcare, feeding people, social services and sanitation has broken down," Carter told a news conference in Johannesburg, South Africa. "These are all indications that the crisis in Zimbabwe is much greater, much worse than we had ever imagined." Carter was part of a delegation that was denied entry into Zimbabwe last week to assess the crisis. The delegation...

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Zimbabwe has barred former U.N. secretary general Kofi Annan, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and other prominent figures from visiting the country to assess the humanitarian crisis, the group said on Saturday. They said they were denied travel visas to Zimbabwe despite the intervention of former South African president Thabo Mbeki, who is mediating the political conflict between President Robert Mugabe's ZANU-PF party and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).

Zimbabwe has refused to let Kofi Annan and two eminent colleagues visit the impoverished African country for a humanitarian mission, the three said Saturday. The former U.N. secretary-general, ex-U.S. President Jimmy Carter and rights advocate Graca Machel had planned to assess the country's needs. They are members of The Elders group, formed by former South African President Nelson Mandela to foster peace and tackle world conflicts.

I'm actually beginning to think had Hillary won there would be fewer Clinton retreads coming on-board. Where the change? The bold innovative thinking? Are former Clinton hacks the best you can do, Barry? Geez, at this rate I almost expect Lani Guinier to be nominated for something. It's almost as if they had some incriminating photos of the guy. No, instead of this mythical change, we get a guy who sent Elian Gonzalez back to hell. Craig, 63, is a partner at Williams & Connolly and a protégé of the late Edward Bennett Williams, the legendary Washington power lawyer. His...

Gregory B. Craig, a well-known Washington lawyer who quarterbacked President Bill Clinton’s impeachment defense, has been chosen White House counsel by President-elect Barack Obama, according to Democratic officials. Craig is intimately familiar with the president-elect’s record because he played the role of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in debate preparations. The officials said Obama has settled on Craig but were not sure when the appointment would be announced. The choice gives the president-elect both experience and loyalty. During the primaries, Craig was an early Clinton alumni defector to Obama. Columnist Robert D. Novak reported back in the winter of 2007 that...

Kofi Annan has urged the Kenyan government to set up a tribunal for people accused of involvement in violence after last year's elections. The former UN secretary general brokered a power-sharing deal which ended the violence in February. Establishing such a tribunal was a central recommendation of a commission headed by a senior judge, Philip Waki, which submitted its report last week. The commission found that politicians on all sides had stirred up violence. Mr Waki also said that the police had used excessive force against protestors. 'No impunity' The commission gave Mr Annan a sealed envelope containing the names...

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - The council of world leaders launched by former President Nelson Mandela is sending a three-person team to help ease tensions in the troubled Middle East, the organization known as The Elders said Friday. Former President Jimmy Carter, former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan and former Irish president Mary Robinson will visit Israel, the Palestinian territories, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Saudi Arabia from April 13-21. Launched last year to celebrate Mandela's 89th birthday, the group of 12 world leaders is dedicated to fostering peace and resolving global crises. Annan noted his recent mission to Kenya in which...

Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki and opposition leader Raila Odinga have signed an agreement to end the country's post-election crisis. At a ceremony in Nairobi, the two men put their signatures to a power-sharing deal brokered by ex-UN head Kofi Annan. --snip-- Speaking after the signing, Mr Kibaki said: "This process has reminded us that as a nation there are more issues that unite than that divide us... "We've been reminded we must do all in our power to safeguard the peace that is the foundation of our national unity... Kenya has room for all of us." Political violence has ignited...

Kenya's political rivals agreed Thursday to write a new constitution within a year as part of a deal to end postelection violence ... In Washington, President Bush said he will dispatch Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to Kenya... Former U.N. chief Kofi Annan, who is mediating in the Kenya crisis, has hammered out a deal ... "The two parties agreed to write a new constitution," ... Opposition leader Raila Odinga ...

Gangs armed with machetes and bows and arrows burned and hacked to death members of a rival tribe in western Kenya Sunday, as the number of dead from the latest explosion of violence over disputed presidential elections rose to 69. Houses were blazing in the tourist gateway town of Naivasha, torched by members of President Mwai Kibaki's tribe exacting revenge on their Luo rivals... The latest deaths raise the toll to nearly 800 killed in ethnic violence and clashes with police since Kibaki was declared winner of Dec. 27 balloting that international and local observers say had a rigged tally....

A former ABC News consultant fired last year because he couldn't authenticate academic credentials is at the center of a new dispute over apparently faked interviews with Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Bill Gates and others. The consultant, Alexis Debat, quit the Nixon Center, a Washington think tank, on Wednesday after Obama's representatives claimed an interview with the senator appearing under Debat's byline in the French magazine Politique Internationale never took place. The interview quoted the Democratic presidential candidate as saying the Iraq war was "a defeat for America." Pelosi, Gates, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, former United Nations Secretary-General...