Special to WorldTribune.com By John J. Metzler UNITED NATIONS — Not one week into the New Year, the North Koreans jolted global concerns as well as the Richter scale with a nuclear weapons test. While the underground blast shook the remote Punggye-ri region near the Russian border, the political reverberations of the bomb have been […]
Special to WorldTribune.com Teheran’s UN envoy on Jan. 4 issues a statement of “regret” for the attacks on Saudi diplomatic facilities in Iran. Gholamali Khoshroo, in a letter to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, said Iran “will take necessary measures to prevent the occurrence of similar incidents in the future.” Iranians protesting Saudi’s execution of outspoken […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By John J. Metzler UNITED NATIONS — In a stern and sweeping rebuke to North Korea’s human rights abuses, a UN Committee has slammed the repressive communist regime in an annual report on “The Situation of human rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.” In a vote of 112 in favor, […]
Special to WorldTribune.com CAIRO — Qatar, which hosts the Hamas leadership, has offered the highest pledge to finance the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip. The Gulf Cooperation Council emirate pledged $1 billion to rebuild the Gaza Strip in wake of its 50-day war with Israel in July and August 2014. Kuwait and the United Arab […]
By John J. Metzler UNITED NATIONS — The specter and shadow of international terrorism tragically clouded the opening of the UN General Assembly session, yet again. The growing menace from ISIS/ISIL jihadi terrorists threatening the sovereignty of Iraq and Syria goes beyond the Middle East and now extends to possible terror strikes in Western Europe […]
By John J. Metzler UNITED NATIONS — Presidents, prime ministers, kings and potentates are gathering in New York for the 69th General Assembly of the UN. But as diplomats come together for the annual general debate which begins on Sept. 24, there’s a cloud of political and social unease greeting delegations from the 193 member […]
By Donald Kirk, East-Asia-Intel.com The United Nations as a force for peace has never lived up to the hopes implicit in the name. You can’t blame a succession of secretary-generals for the failures of the UN The current secretary-general, Ban Ki-Moon, may seem bland and ineffective, but there’s not much he can do when each […]
PARIS — The headlines seem from another era, if not century; that of Christian persecution by militant Islam in the Middle East. Yet the modern political responses to this age-old conflict appear ambivalent to what’s emerged as an organized attempt by the militant Islamic State of Syria and Levant to impose a caliphate both on […]
Special to WorldTribune.com WASHINGTON — Iraq has acknowledged that Islamic State of Iraq and Levant captured a former chemical weapons facility. The government of Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki has informed the United Nations that ISIL seized a CW production plant of the former regime of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. In a letter to UN […]
John J. Metzler UNITED NATIONS — If it’s Tuesday, this must be Havana. Given UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon’s peripatetic global travels, the two-day visit to Cuba, especially in the midst of a frigid New York Winter, seemingly made sense. After all, the trip was officially to attend the meeting of the Community of Latin […]