The launching of missiles by North Korea, including one said to be capable of reaching the U.S., is, more than anything else an abject failure in diplomacy by the United Nations.
The UN Security Council, which held an emergency meeting on the crisis yesterday–with Russia and China resisting calls by the U.S. and Japan for tough action--should be considered like most things UN, inadequate.
Tough action and the United Nations should not be used in the same sentence.
Perhaps lost in human memory is the beginning of this crisis.
Back in January 2003, UN Secretary-General Kofi annan dispatched a special envoy to North Korea "to assess the humanitarian situation" as Pyongyang came under global pressure to shut down a suspected nuclear arms program. The special envoy was Canadian Maurice Strong.
In 2003, North Korea had threatened World War III, boldly claiming it could hold its own in a `fire-to-fire' standoff'.
This is what South Korea had to say about the situation: The potential nuclear standoff (is) a matter of "life and death".
"Why is the UN sending Strong into a situation of life and death?" Canada Free Press asked at the time. "What credentials does this Canadian-born environmental guru have to meddle in such crucial international matters?"
Then in the summer of 2005, the UN stated that it would not be renewing Strong's contract and annan's point man announced that he would be stepping down as the UN's special envoy in North Korea until his name was cleared from alleged connections to the Oil-for-Food scandal.
Strong was never investigated in the Oil-for-food scandal, and as this story is being written, his friend, Korean Tongsun Park, who gave him a cheque in the amount of $988,885 from the Saddam Hussein regime, is on trial in a Manhattan court.
Strong was paid by the UN for envoy duty in North Korea. Has annan, who oversees the UN Security Council, ever tabled a report on what his own handpicked envoy ever accomplished in North Korea?
In comments published by the mainstream media during his stint as envoy, Strong always inferred that North Korea was conducting itself in a reasonable manner and that the U.S. was overreacting.
What was Strong's first move when his UN contract was dropped? He traded in North Korea for China, his first love.
Indeed, Strong said his mission in North Korea, which the UN had curtly announced it would not be renewing for him, was something he had planned to give up anyway to make more time for China.
"Long before China had a tentacle in every corner of the global village, Strong was boasting that the Red Dragon was fast on its way to replacing the United States of america as world economic leader." (canadafreepress.com, July 23, 2005).
Even though he teamed up Mikhail Gorbachev in March of 2000 to co-author the Earth Charter, which both parties intend as a replacement for the Ten Commandments, Strong is barely known by average Canadians and americans. Yet the gall displayed in the today-the-pond-tomorrow-the-world mentality of Maurice Strong and friends is one for the books.
In august 2002, John Passacantando, executive director of Greenpeace U.S. wrote an article entitled George W. Bush, Meet Maurice Strong.
"The study of leadership is a great american obsession," Passacantando wrote. "We make rich men and women out of the historian who can teach us something new about those who led us in crisis or into new eras."
Passacantado went on to look at the profiles of two modern leaders, Bush and Strong, "two men with backgrounds in the energy industry whose emerging legacies look like a Hollywood caricature of good vs. evil."
In ending the piece, the executive director of Greenpeace U.S. wrote that "The great historians will have to sort out why these two men differed so much, although at the current rate, kids the world over will want to know who stopped Bush; and Strong is on the shortlist to do that right now."
Meanwhile, seven missiles, including a long-range Taepodong-2, which the U.S. said failed shortly after take-off, were launched by North Korea.
Correspondents are saying Pyongyang may see this action as a way to get attention and break the diplomatic log jam over stalled talks on its nuclear capabilities.
The United Nations and their man in North Korea took the world from the threat of a third world war to launched missiles with the capability of reaching america.
The US should hold the UN accountable for its real time textbook proof of abject failure in diplomacy.
Canada Free Press founding editor Most recent by Judi McLeod is an award-winning journalist with 30 years experience in the print media. Her work has appeared on Newsmax.com, Drudge Report, Foxnews.com, Glenn Beck. Judi can be reached at: judi@canadafreepress.com
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