Kofi Annan at Stanford

     Cathie Adams, who is a UN watcher and has attended many of its conferences, is not convinced that the reforms will make the UN acceptable to her. She writes:
     "Who is reforming the UN? Secretary General Kofi Annan is a figure head, he is not the reformer. Maurice Strong, who led the 1972 and 1992 UN environmental conferences, is being paid $1.00 a year to reform the UN. We should expect him to style his reform around his pet issue: the environment. The Kyoto Protocol and other environmental UN treaties are prize documents for Maurice Strong and Mikhael Gorbachev; both been working on an Earth Charter, a.k.a. global governance. This September, the UN and Gorbachev's State of the World Forum will meet jointly at the UN in NY to discuss the future of the UN. I expect the Strong/Gorbachev global governance/UN reform package to be a "democratic socialist" scheme. Gorbachev has simply put a green covering on his red agenda."


     My comment: This brings us back to the old discussion about global warming and atmospheric pollution, which were the subject of the Kyoto conference. Like the UN itself, these issues divide even informed people, including those at Stanford. WAIS carries on a serious but friendly debate on these subjects, and regrets that Stanford does not promote a critical discussion of the UN.

Ronald Hilton - 3/4/00