...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 on the Syria conflict after Russia and the United States launched a joint political initiative, officials said Thursday.
U.N. leader
the ephemeral Ban Ki-moon... of whom it can be said to his credit that he is not Kofi Annan...
"has asked the joint special envoy to stay on and he has accepted to stay on," U.N. Deputy Secretary General Jan Eliasson told news hounds, praising the U.S.-Russia effort to organize a conference on the two-year-old conflict.
Brahimi had told the U.N. leadership he planned to tender his resignation this month out of growing frustration at the major powers' failure to back a negotiated end the conflict, diplomats said.