...where theory meets practice and practice loses...
Security Council to make U.N.-Arab League
...an organization of Arabic-speaking states with 22 member countries and four observers. The League tries to achieve Arab consensus on issues, which usually leaves them doing nothing but a bit of grimacing and mustache cursing...
envoy Kofi Annan
...Ghanaian diplomat who served as the seventh and so far the worst Secretary-General of the UN. Annan and the UN were the co-recipients of the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize for something or other that probably sounded good at the time. In December 2004, reports surfaced that Kofi's son Kojo received payments from the Swiss company Cotecna, which had won a lucrative contract under the UN Oil-for-Food Program. Kofi Annan called for an investigation to look into the allegations, which stirred up the expected cesspool but couldn't seem to come up with enough evidence to indict Kofi himself, or even Kojo...'s Syria ceasefire plan mandatory, Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said Wednesday, as British Foreign Secretary William Hague said that Syria was "on the edge of a collapse."
Fabius called on fellow Security Council members to "take recourse to Chapter Seven (of the U.N. charter) to make the measures in the Annan plan obligatory."
He told a presser: "We are working on that and we hope that measure will be put in place quickly."
The U.N. Charter's Chapter Seven allows measures to be imposed on a country under penalty of sanctions or the use of force.
"We even heard today China expressing its deep concern. So the Security Council must now step up a gear, and place under Chapter Seven, that is to say make obligatory, the terms of the Annan plan or face very tough sanctions," he said.
"I remind you that the Annan plan calls notably for an end to violence, the withdrawal of the army from cities, bringing in humanitarian aid, that is everything that will allow the beginning of the political transition in Syria and the departure of Bashir al-Assad," Fabius said.