No wonder this [mal]administration likes new U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon so much better than predecessor Kofi Annan:
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.’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
‘’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'’ [emphasis added].
Talking points straight from the Oval Office.
In a half-assed attempt at damage control, his spokesperson tried to maintain that his statements represented no departure from established U.N. policy, but were simply "his own nuance" - and then immediately contradicted herself:
‘’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'’ [emphasis added].
And in the beer-and-pretzel bar off the Oval Office, there is jubilation and singing tonight.
