US/UNO: new angle for crisis management

Good cop-bad cop combination routine used by UNO and Washington.

A new angle to crisis management is being provided by the classic double used in crime investigations – the heavy hand and the donkey and stick method. In this farce, Washington plays the bad cop with Baghdad while the UNO plays a more pacific role.

Washington’s refusal to accept an invitation from Baghdad of a Congressional Committee, to travel freely inside Iraq to see for themselves whether or not there are weapons of mass destruction, while at the same time it creates the illusion of the ominous spectre of war looming on the horizon marks one position.

At the other extreme is the United Nations Organisation, which does not flatly reject a similar offer to the Chief UN Weapons Inspector Hans Blix, but chooses to “analyse the proposal” in the Security Council.

The UNO makes political noises about conversations and diplomacy and trying to find solutions for war not to break out, while Washington, transfixed in an eye-to-eye stare-out with Saddam Hussein in which neither dares to blink, allows Senator Joseph Biden, a member of the International Relations Committee, to utter phrases like “I believe there will probably be a war with Iraq”.

Washington knows that such a war at a time when the rest of the world is unanimous in expressing concern, at least, or open hostility, more commonly and at a time when the Palestinian situation reaches white-hot on the regional thermometer, would place the international coalition against terrorism at breaking point and would earn the USA far more enemies than it needs at this point in time.

The notion therefore arises that in tandem with the UNO Security Council, which the USA is host to, Washington and New York have launched into a crisis management duo routine of two cops handling a serious crime, curiously, one with the black hat (George Bush) the other with the white Stetson (Kofi Annan).

Timothy BANCROFT-HINCHEY PRAVDA.Ru