First Day Trouble For New SG

http://www.breitbart.com/news/2007/01/02/D8MDE8K00.html

Quote:

New U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon ran into trouble on his first day of work Tuesday over Saddam Hussein's execution when he failed to state the United Nations' opposition to the death penalty and said capital punishment should be a decision of individual countries.

The U.N. has an official stance opposing capital punishment and Ban's predecessor Kofi Annan reiterated it frequently. The top U.N. envoy in Iraq, Ashraf Qazi, restated it again on Saturday after the former Iraqi dictator was hanged.

Ban, however, took a different approach, never mentioning the U.N. ban on the death penalty in all its international tribunals, and the right to life enshrined in the U.N. Charter.

"Saddam Hussein was responsible for committing heinous crimes and unspeakable atrocities against Iraqi people and we should never forget victims of his crime," Ban said in response to a reporter's question about Saddam's execution Saturday for crimes against humanity. "The issue of capital punishment is for each and every member state to decide."

His ambiguous answer put a question mark over the U.N.'s stance on the death penalty. It also gave the new chief an early taste of how tricky global issues are, and how every word can make a difference.

Michele Montas, Ban's new spokeswoman, insisted there was no change in U.N. policy in what she described as "his own nuance" on the death penalty.

"The U.N. policy still remains that the organization is not for capital punishment," she said. "However, the way the law is applied in different countries, he left it open to those different countries."

The death penalty is legal in Ban's homeland, South Korea as it is in many other countries including the United States, Russia, China and much of the Middle East.

Can't have a Secretary General who admits that member states are sovereign, I guess.

And to think everybody hated on Bolton.

Jam it back in, in the dark.