Kofi Annan Completes 10-Year Term as UN Secretery General
Annan's 10 years at the head of the UN are described in a story in the LA Times today, including:
"Annan, the son of a chieftain from Ghana, was christened 'Anthony' but was known by the name Kofi, which means 'born on Friday.' He joined the bottom ranks of the U.N. in 1962 and didn't plan to stay longer than four years, he said. But he quietly rose through the institution to head the peacekeeping department. In December 1996, the Clinton administration pushed him as its candidate to replace Boutros-Boutros Ghali, the outspoken Egyptian secretary-general it deemed a liability to U.S. interests.
"Annan was chosen because he was an African who knew the U.N. system, and had proved that he was pragmatic and effective and could work with the United States when he oversaw peacekeepers in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Haiti. But most important, he did not have a political agenda or an overweening ego that could put him in conflict with the U.S. By the end of Annan's decade, however, he grew to be a quiet but compelling challenger to Washington."
The article goes on to say:
"In 2002, President Bush challenged the Security Council to confront Iraq or stand aside, and while the U.S. attempted for six months to gain the U.N.'s stamp of legitimacy for its long-planned invasion, it ended up going into Iraq without it.
nnan cited the failure to stop the Iraq war as the worst moment of his career.
"'I really did everything I could to try to see if we could stop it,' he said, including desperate rounds of phone calls and meetings with every leader he could reach, with every proposal he could think of. In April 2003, weeks after the invasion began, Annan literally lost his voice.
"He seemed to lose his nerve as well, taking weeks off with what was described as 'a very bad cold,' but what aides described later as a sort of depression or 'paralysis of despair. ' He returned, somewhat diminished but determined to make the U.N. the kind of institution that the U.S., or any other country, would find indispensable.
"Washington went into Iraq without the U.N.'s blessing, but it also had to do without significant U.N. help in rebuilding the country, an essential piece of postwar planning that the administration had assumed the world body would take on. Annan did send a team of his best and brightest, including his close friend and diplomatic icon, Sergio Vieira de Mello. Another one of the most painful moments of his career came in August 2003, when the bombing of the U.N.'s headquarters in Baghdad killed 22 people — many of whom he had personally asked to go. De Mello was among those slain.
"Those deaths 'hit me as much as the loss of my twin sister,' Annan said this month. His sister, Efua, died in 1991 after an illness.">>>
Annan's 10 years at the head of the UN are described in a story in the LA Times today, including:
"Annan, the son of a chieftain from Ghana, was christened 'Anthony' but was known by the name Kofi, which means 'born on Friday.' He joined the bottom ranks of the U.N. in 1962 and didn't plan to stay longer than four years, he said. But he quietly rose through the institution to head the peacekeeping department. In December 1996, the Clinton administration pushed him as its candidate to replace Boutros-Boutros Ghali, the outspoken Egyptian secretary-general it deemed a liability to U.S. interests.
"Annan was chosen because he was an African who knew the U.N. system, and had proved that he was pragmatic and effective and could work with the United States when he oversaw peacekeepers in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Haiti. But most important, he did not have a political agenda or an overweening ego that could put him in conflict with the U.S. By the end of Annan's decade, however, he grew to be a quiet but compelling challenger to Washington."
The article goes on to say:
"In 2002, President Bush challenged the Security Council to confront Iraq or stand aside, and while the U.S. attempted for six months to gain the U.N.'s stamp of legitimacy for its long-planned invasion, it ended up going into Iraq without it.
nnan cited the failure to stop the Iraq war as the worst moment of his career.
"'I really did everything I could to try to see if we could stop it,' he said, including desperate rounds of phone calls and meetings with every leader he could reach, with every proposal he could think of. In April 2003, weeks after the invasion began, Annan literally lost his voice.
"He seemed to lose his nerve as well, taking weeks off with what was described as 'a very bad cold,' but what aides described later as a sort of depression or 'paralysis of despair. ' He returned, somewhat diminished but determined to make the U.N. the kind of institution that the U.S., or any other country, would find indispensable.
"Washington went into Iraq without the U.N.'s blessing, but it also had to do without significant U.N. help in rebuilding the country, an essential piece of postwar planning that the administration had assumed the world body would take on. Annan did send a team of his best and brightest, including his close friend and diplomatic icon, Sergio Vieira de Mello. Another one of the most painful moments of his career came in August 2003, when the bombing of the U.N.'s headquarters in Baghdad killed 22 people — many of whom he had personally asked to go. De Mello was among those slain.
"Those deaths 'hit me as much as the loss of my twin sister,' Annan said this month. His sister, Efua, died in 1991 after an illness.">>>